


No More Than You

by riotcow



Category: X-Men (Movies)
Genre: Abuse, BDSM, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Grow a spine Rogue, Magneto is a control freak, Sexual Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 10:54:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 26
Words: 88,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2148060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riotcow/pseuds/riotcow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Post X3) After the Cure fails, Rogue retreats from life, and then begins an unexpected acquaintance with Magneto that leads to an affair of dubious wisdom. It turns out that Magneto isn't a very nice guy. Very dark, culminating in some very explicit and disturbing abuse and sexual violence. Because that's my idea of romance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2006.

It had taken months for the cure to fail. By then, Rogue had already enrolled and begun her studies at NYU. So she started her college education as she had always dreamed and yet never believed that she could... ungloved, without a scarf, wearing adorable strappy tank tops during the few days of Indian summer that occurred late that September, just like all the other giggling freshmen girls. If Rogue was a little more grave than her peers were, if her eyes were a little more serious, no one noticed overly much. But she was able to flirt, to flounce just a little in the way that every eighteen year old girl ought to have the chance to flounce, and when her good-looking boyfriend Bobby came to visit her on the weekends from somewhere in New England, her roommate and her new friends from class just teased her good-naturedly.

It lasted through January.

In a way, when the cure finally did fail, she was even more devastated than she had been when her mutation originally manifested.

At least it was just the cat who was hurt, Rogue told herself vaguely, but really it had been terrible. Rogue and her roommate had gotten themselves a kitten named Molly, a smoke grey puff of fur who liked to leap on their heads when they came in the door. If Molly leaping on her head had been the first contact she'd had after her mutation began to reassert itself, the kitten probably would have just been knocked unconscious, and she might have survived. But that wasn't what happened. Rogue had been taking a nap, and Molly had curled up under her arm and fallen asleep beside her.

Rogue started awake suddenly, feeling strange, feeling panicked, with no idea why. Her skin was crawling. She felt strangely overwhelmed by scent -- last night's dinner, the cilantro growing on the sill, her own sweat. She felt strangely sensitive to sound -- angry honking on the street below, rustling of fabric as she stirred, something skittering behind the wall. She felt twitchy and impulsive the way that she had after Logan had saved her life on the Statue of Liberty.

Logan. Feral. Animal instincts. Her mutation. Rogue bolted upright. And noticed Molly's cold little body, still curled up for sleep.

_No._

The despair was crushing. It was the first time that she had actually killed a living thing with her mutation. Rogue couldn't leave the apartment. Couldn't go to class. Couldn't face her roommate. Couldn't call and tell Bobby. Days passed, Rogue locked in her room, ignoring the knocks on her bedroom door, ignoring the phone, ignoring her body's demands for food. It seemed to take forever for Molly's impulses to fade. And she'd been such a tiny thing.

Finally, numb, she pulled a pair of gloves from the back of her underwear drawer. She dressed carefully, the old familiar routines, the routines she had rejoiced at discarding when she thought that she was cured.

She packed her duffle bag -- the same old one that she'd once thrown into the back of Logan's dilapidated trailer, a million years ago, in another life. She slipped out of the apartment when her roommate was gone, withdrew all the money that she could from her bank account, and disappeared.

The studio that she found was ridiculously small and not at all clean. She stayed there for two months and her money ran out. By then, she was at least able to get out of bed most days. She took a job as a waitress in a grimy diner. She managed to pay her rent, buy groceries. Once in a while, she went to a movie. She told people that her name was Marie Davis. She had no ID, but she didn't do anything that required one. Her employer didn't care.

Six months passed. Bobby had not found her. Logan had not found her. Her life was a monotonous hell, but as long as there was no one in it who she wanted to touch, she could almost forget what had happened.

Evidently the cure hadn't even really "cured" her mutation temporarily, merely suppressed it, because with the return of her mutation had come the return of the congregation in her head. Logan, the strongest presence, because she had almost drained him twice. Then Erik, who had held onto her until she had most of his power. They were both constant companions through virtually every day. Bobby and John and David were like fleeting whispers in the back that she rarely heard from, but they were there. Everyone she'd ever touched, in her head once again.

Neither Logan nor Erik approved of the fact that she'd gone to ground, and neither of them liked being in agreement with the other much either. Logan urged her to return to the mansion, of course. Rogue didn't know what Erik thought she ought to do, but his contempt for the cowardice of her current choices was clear. In her isolation from other people, they had become stronger, and there were days now when it almost seemed that they were sparring directly with each other in her mind. Her inner Logan seemed sensitive to the effect that his presence and Magneto's had on her and tried to control both himself and the others in order to grant Rogue as much peace of mind as possible. Erik whispered seductively to her, trying to influence her thoughts, her feelings. It enraged Logan in turn, and then his rage overwhelmed her. She wondered if she was going mad.

Erik was the only one of them who had spent any significant amount of time in New York City in his life. Sometimes she recognized landmarks, certain corners, statues that she'd never seen before. Every time that happened, it was Erik. Some days it made Rogue smile, made her feel a little less alone in this city. Which made Logan uneasy.

That was how she found the cafe. She passed it one day, not far from her dingy apartment, and thought, _How remarkable, that's still there? It must be forty years now_. It wasn't her own thought.

She went in and ordered a cup of strong tea. Rogue preferred coffee.

It really was a lovely place. There was a small veranda. It had actually changed quite a bit inside, but it was indeed the same establishment. Rogue developed a liking for it that was quite independent of Erik's nostalgia, though the sense of familiarity did remain part of the appeal. She began stopping by regularly.

Logan didn't like it much, but then he was so worried about Rogue that even he reluctantly came to accept it, if just for the reason that it was virtually the only time that she was around other people other than her unpleasant hours at work.

She bought herself a second-hand laptop, and she began to write sometimes, sitting in Erik's cafe. It wasn't much, as far as attempts to return to the land of the living went. But it was a start.

Sometimes now she thought about calling the mansion.

 _Do it, kid,_ thought Logan. _Oh yes, imagine the pity on their faces when they see you again. Doesn't that sound appealing_ , thought Erik.

She wrote, confused.

She looked up to find him watching her thoughtfully.

He was wearing a dark v-neck sweater and black slacks. His autumn jacket was draped carefully over the empty chair beside him. His grey hair was neatly combed, his frigid blue eyes as sharp as they had always been. He was holding a book that had obviously drifted down toward the table when he had looked up and seen her there.

Her breath was caught in her throat. She wasn't sure if she would ever be able to breathe again. Her eyes were locked with his and she couldn't look away.

After a long moment, he tilted his head and a small smirk appeared on his lined face. He gestured for her to come join him at his table.

She suddenly found herself able to exhale again. With slow, awkward movements, she closed the laptop, tucked it into her battered backpack, picked up her backpack and her coat. Logan was telling her to get the hell out of there.

With slow, self-conscious steps, she found herself crossing the cafe and sitting down across from him, putting her backpack on the floor, and dropping her coat over top of it.

"Hello, Rogue," he greeted her, and someone overhearing him might have thought that he sounded perfectly cordial, not sinister at all.

"Hello, Erik," she responded, and her voice sounded to her like it was coming from a million miles away.

His eyes widened minutely at the way that she addressed him, and one corner of his mouth lifted further. "Why, you've still got a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear? How unexpectedly charming."

She didn't know quite what to say to that, so she didn't say anything. Slowly she was becoming aware that her heart was racing in her chest and that the acrid taste of fear was filling her mouth.

Magneto carefully marked his place in his book (with a metal bookmark, of course; he was predictable in ways) and set it down on the table. He looked for all the world like a perfect gentleman, except for the calculating gleam in his eyes as they traveled over her, lingering at the streak of white in her hair, then moving downward and noting her threadbare, slightly stained gloves.

"It must have been quite a disappointment for you to have to put those back on."

She had no idea how he knew that she'd taken the cure, and she couldn't tell if the fleeting note in his voice was compassion or mockery. The Erik in her head scoffed at her. "It was. I ran away," she responded hollowly, hoping that at some point her pulse was going to slow down.

He nodded slowly. "I see. So the remaining X-Men don't know where you are, then?" The question sounded casual, but Rogue's inner Logan growled a warning.

"No," she told him recklessly. "I couldn't face them again. I'm on my own now. I'm alone."

His sharp gaze was moving intently over her face, studying her. "And are you lonely?" he asked, as if he had every right in the world to ask her intimate questions about her feelings.

"Very," she replied wearily, leaning forward.

"I see," he said again. There was a long pause as they continued to look at each other, which seemed not to bother him at all, as he sat through it quite still. She began to fidget, but she didn't feel like she could bear to stand up and walk away from him. The Logan in her head was railing at her to leave, but she ignored him.

Magneto lifted his tea cup and took a long sip, watching her over the rim, then tilted his head again.

"So what do you think that you'll do with yourself, now that you've left them behind?" he asked conversationally, replacing the cup on its saucer.

Rogue shrugged slightly, and her odd feeling of dissociation was finally beginning to fade, and she was fully realizing that she was sitting in an anonymous cafe in New York conversing with one of the most dangerous mutants in the world, a man who'd tried to murder her when she was barely sixteen.

Oddly, she still found herself wanting to stay. She felt somehow... captivated. By him. By something about him. Something about those frosty blue eyes.

"I don't know," she answered him slowly. "Maybe I should try to go back to school or something. Learn about something. Since I'm not going to be an X-Man."

"Education is never wasted," he agreed gamely. "And what do you think you might like to learn about?"

"Political science, maybe," she said thoughtfully, though she didn't think the answer was her own. It was his, she realized quickly, and from the look on the face of the real Magneto, she wondered if he knew it.

He smiled at her again. "You still have more than a bit of me up there, haven't you, my dear?" She shuddered visibly at the dangerous tone in his voice.

"For some reason, living alone, not talking to anyone, you've gotten stronger," she told him, knowing full well how foolish the disclosure was. "Both you and Logan have. You're the reason that I've been coming here all this time."

For some reason the voice of her inner Logan was becoming somehow more distant, and she wondered if it was BECAUSE she was here with Magneto. Maybe being in his presence strengthened him in her head, and her inner Erik was somehow able to hold Wolverine at bay.

She didn't understand how her own head worked. But the man across from her was still gazing at her with a look that turned her guts to ice.

He glanced down at the watch on his wrist and frowned, looking back at her. "Rogue, I'm afraid that I have another appointment that I simply can't miss. But I must confess that I don't wish to cut our unexpected reunion short."

She shrugged a little again. "Do you have to go?" she asked, and part of her wondered why there was such a plaintive note in her voice at the prospect of parting from a madman who terrified her completely.

The calculating look was back on his face, and he actually paused for a long moment before he responded. "Well," he finally said, "we shall have to continue this tomorrow, then. Here, at two o'clock." His tone was rather business-like, as if it was a given that she would agree.

"Okay," she heard herself say, and Magneto stood and collected his things as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Rogue sat still, watching him. He donned his jacket and pulled a pair of lightweight gloves out of the pocket, snugging them onto his hands, gazing down at her. Something about the action affected her deeply, and Rogue was astonished to find herself holding back a whimper of fear.

He paused, looking minutely surprised for a moment. She had to look away from him, she couldn't help it.

He finished arranging himself and brushed past her on his way to the door. "Until tomorrow, my dear," he nearly-whispered, his gloved hand falling briefly on her shoulder as he passed.


	2. Chapter 2

Rogue knew that she had no excuse for going back the next day. She could feebly try to explain her actions of the previous day to herself in terms of shock, but now she'd had plenty of time to collect herself, she knew full well that it was foolish to return, and yet she was doing so.

Logan spent the morning ranting at her for it, but she ignored him. Her inner Erik was mostly silent, confident that she was going to do exactly what he wanted her to. She found herself dressing carefully, pulling on her neatest pair of jeans, a flattering cinnamon-colored shirt, her long brown satin gloves, brushing out her hair until it lay over her shoulders in a thick sheaf.

There was no reason that it should matter what she wore. The Logan in her head was horrified. Truth be told, so was she, but not horrified enough to change her mind.

She got there first and ordered coffee -- ordering for herself today; her nerves demanded it. Erik entered the cafe exactly at two, which was exactly what she expected, and he didn't look the slightest bit surprised to see her as he joined her at the table and ordered a cup of tea.

"Good afternoon, Rogue."

"Hello, Erik." Her hands were shaking slightly as she put her coffee back on the table. She hated the way that he seemed to notice everything.

Magneto smiled at her arrogantly. "I truly terrify you, don't I? And yet here you are."

She looked down in shame, folding her hands tightly in her lap, biting her lower lip. It was a girlish habit and she reprimanded herself for it.

He chuckled softly. "I'm not going to try to kill you again, you know."

She glanced up at him from behind her hair. "Are you saying that I shouldn't be afraid of you?"

"No, Rogue, that's not what I'm saying at all. I think you're quite right to be afraid of me," he told her casually.

Rogue shook her head, as if to try to clear it. Nothing about any of this made any sense at all. Why was she here? What was she doing?

"You have no idea why you came back, do you?" he asked her then, as if he could read her mind, and she looked up, startled. His expression was not at all calming.

"I shouldn't have come," she said, but made no move to get up.

Magneto scoffed. "Of course you should have. You need something a little bit civilized in your life, my dear. It may as well be me."

"In my life?" she echoed weakly. "I hardly think that meeting twice for tea makes you a part of my life." She plucked nervously at the seam of her gloves.

"Ah, yes. Well, that is why we're going to have to make this a regular occurrence, you see." Erik sipped his tea and crossed his legs. "Charles' school is clearly no longer the place for you, and yet I feel that, even considering his differences with me, he would be glad to know that you have some kind of meaningful contact in your life."

Rogue tried hard not to react to mention of Xavier. "The Professor is dead," she reminded him flatly, thankful her voice didn't shake.

His eyes flashed at her and she cringed just a bit, inwardly. "Do you think I have forgotten that, child? I was there when the Phoenix killed him."

She shook her head and looked away, and a long silence passed, during which Rogue mostly studied her gloves. Finally Magneto cleared his throat. "So, Rogue, let us consider how you might actually make something worthwhile out of this pathetic little life that you've made for yourself." She glared at him, but he merely smiled in cold amusement. "While I am entertained that you would consider studying political science because of my influence, I don't think that's really quite the right choice for you. What would _you_ like to study?"

Rogue shrugged with one shoulder and he frowned at the adolescent gesture. "I dunno."

He waved a hand idly, and her spoon, which had been lying by her coffee cup, rapped her sharply on the knuckles. She squeaked and jerked her hand away, looking at him angrily, then looking around to see if anyone had noticed.

"That's not an answer. Don't tell me you don't know. Think about it and say something intelligent."

A flare of indignation actually overcame her fear of him for a moment, and she opened her mouth to protest his chastisement. Magneto merely lifted a brow and tilted his head at her warningly, and Rogue's words died in her throat.

"Well, I _don't_ know what I want to do," she said sulkily, eying him warily and pulling her hands off the table, away from any tableware. "I like to paint, and music. And I like to travel. Not that I've gotten to do much of that."

"Do you read?" he inquired, and she noticed his eyes traveling over the streaks in her hair again.

"Uh, sometimes." She looked at her coffee cup, pretty sure that he would not be impressed by her consumption of spy novels and medical thrillers. "It's mostly just trashy stuff, though, to pass the time. I can't afford cable. Once in a while I read something, y'know, classical or whatever. I read some Oscar Wilde, some Mark Twain." She looked up at him now. "That's you. But I kinda liked A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. It was funny." He nodded, perhaps approvingly, and she felt a strange flush.

"I read some Thoreau and stuff too. That's Logan," she added suddenly, for some reason discomfited by him thinking that he was the only voice in her head.

"And do you play chess, Rogue?" His voice was entirely conversational, but his eyes were focused intensely on her. "Did you play chess with Charles, back at the school?"

Why would he ask that? Why would he assume that that was how the Professor would take in interest in the manifestation of his old friend in his student's head? "Only twice," she muttered in a tight voice. "I think it bothered him, the way that I played."

He smiled at her slowly again, and she shuddered. How could he be so creepy without raising a hand?

_Because you know what he could do if he did raise a hand._

"Did it bother _you_? The way that you played?"

"Kinda," she admitted reluctantly, caught up in his gaze again.

"Take off your gloves," he told her suddenly, staring hard at her.

Slowly Rogue shook her head, though she couldn't break her eye contact with him. Her heart was pounding again. "No," she somehow found the will to croak.

He narrowed his eyes slightly. "Take them off, Rogue. I won't let anyone come near us."

She felt a strange thrill at the power implied by his words, knowing that no one _could_ come near them if he didn't allow it. "I shouldn't," she whispered hoarsely.

Magneto leaned forward, still holding her gaze with his own, and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, drawing her right hand from her lap. His grip was warm, even through the material. She held her breath as he gathered the fabric between his fingers and tugged, slowly drawing the glove from her hand.

She felt as if he were stripping her naked, right there in the middle of the cafe, and she could not stop him.

He repeated the procedure with her other glove, and she saw him noting her responses, her dilated pupils, her tight breathing. The Wolverine in her head had mostly been quiet throughout their exchange, a similar effect to what had happened the day before, but this provocation was too great and he was snarling loudly in the back of her head at what was occurring.

Magneto folded her gloves neatly and placed them by his coat on the chair beside him, out of her reach. Her eyes followed his movements intently.

"Put your hand on the table," he commanded next.

Rogue could feel the blood draining from her face. "You want to touch me," she whispered in frightened tones.

He tilted his head at her and smirked. "Yes," he drawled slowly. "Of course I do. And you want to be touched."

She tried to shake her head -- she didn't want to be touched, she definitely didn't -- but she found herself putting her shaking hand on the table, where he could reach it. Wolverine was railing angrily as Magneto reached toward her. Rogue ignored it.

His fingers brushed lightly across the back of her hand, too fast for her power. She gasped and he smiled in approval of her reactivity. There was something absolutely obscene about what was happening between them there in that cafe, and Rogue could not deny it.

She couldn't hide it, either. Her nipples were hard beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. His fingers lingered on the back of her hand, long enough to just feel the beginning of the pull, and she closed her eyes and tilted her head back just a bit as his gaze raked downward over her body.

"Ask me for more," he prompted her in a silky voice. She savored the trickle of his arrogance as it flowed through her veins. She had gotten no distinct thoughts from the contact, but she knew that he was deeply fascinated by what was happening between them.

She peeked at him from beneath her eyelashes. He was still composed, but his eyes were intense on her face.

 _Don't you dare do it_ , Logan growled at her.

"Please..." she whispered. "More."

Magneto's hand settled lightly over hers and rested there. It took about a second for the pull to start, and though it had never happened that way before, Rogue felt the electricity of it between her legs as well as in the back of her hand where he was touching her. The fingers of her other hand curled around the edge of her chair, and she watched the familiar, horrible tightening of his features as she pulled at him.

He pulled away after only a second or two, breathing just a little bit hard, his blue eyes glittering brightly. She saw an image of herself from his head, and she knew that she looked flushed and lovely to him.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked him hoarsely, swallowing hard.

"Because you need to use your power in order to stay healthy," he replied smoothly, his voice showing little effect of the strain.

She narrowed her eyes just a bit, still flush with arousal. "That's not the only reason," she made herself say.

He chuckled at her and brushed his fingers over her hand again and she stifled a moan at the fraction of a second of pull. Some vague part of her remembered that there were humans around them and wondered how much of a scene they were making, but she also somehow knew that Erik would still being paying attention to that.

"True," he admitted. "But you don't need to know the other reasons yet. The first reason is enough to ensure that you'll come back."

One last time he let his touch linger, and she saw him brace himself against the effect. This one was longer than the first, and his fingers actually tightened around her hand for a second from the strain. His bared his teeth at her briefly in a snarl, and she bit down hard on her lower lip to keep from groaning out loud as he pulled away. She felt his fascination run into her again -- _I can push her further, if I want_ \-- and she shied away from noticing some of the other effects it was having on him.

He took a moment to collect himself. "Intense, isn't it?" he murmured softly, a strange look on his face.

She nodded and sat back in her chair, nearly panting. She looked around suddenly through the curtain of her hair, and while she noticed one girl across the cafe glancing at her strangely, she was surprised to find that everyone in the place wasn't staring at them.

"You did fine," he told her in a pleased voice, noting her concern. "No one noticed anything pointed enough to cause a stir."

She looked back at him, amazed at how composed he looked. He was smirking at her again. He did that a lot.

"You liked that," she said quietly, eyes shifting away from him and then back, and he chuckled at her accusatory tone.

"No more than you did," he rejoined, sitting back again and crossing his arms as he gazed at her.

She chewed on her lip, annoyed that every interaction that she ever had with him was entirely on his terms. He was a terrifying man, but wasn't she plenty dangerous in her own right? Did he have to seem so wholly sanguine about toying with her and her power when she could _kill_ him?

"This is sick," she said suddenly, standing up and pulling on her jacket. "I don't know what you're playing at, but this ain't good for me. I'm not coming back."

"Tuesday," he told her calmly, watching her notice that her gloves were still on the other side of him, that she'd have to reach across him to retrieve him. He made no move to return them.

"I need my gloves." Her voice was tight.

He smiled. "No, you don't."

She made a frustrated noise, shoving her hands in her pockets and turning to stalk away.

"I'll see you Tuesday, my dear," he called after her.

Rogue squared her shoulders. "No you won't."


	3. Chapter 3

When Tuesday came, Rogue got dressed carefully again. Just to go out to get some groceries, of course.

Logan was pissed at her for it.

Usually she went to the store around the corner for her groceries, but she had decided that she wanted to splurge on fresh salmon for dinner, and the seafood market was in the other direction. Which just so happened to be past the cafe where she sometimes went to write.

She wasn't going to stop and see if he was there, though. She could prove to herself that this wasn't a ploy to see him, because it was after two by the time that she left her apartment, and he wasn't a patient man, so she was sure he wouldn't still be there by the time that she walked past at a quarter past the hour.

Logan could just cool off, as far as she was concerned, because his suspicions were totally off-base.

Of course she glanced in the windows as she walked past, but that was idle curiosity and nothing more. She was walking on the other side of the street, so she knew that she wasn't hoping to see him so that she could change her mind and go in at the last moment. She wouldn't have walked on the other side of the street if she'd wanted to do that.

She saw no sign of him. Her pace slowed as her eyes searched the cafe. _See, just as I predicted_ , she thought fiercely for the benefit of her inner Logan. She tried not to notice that the thought was disappointed.

"You're not looking for me, are you?" Magneto asked in an entertained voice from over her shoulder.

She spun to face him. "No," she blurted, knowing how thoroughly ridiculous her denial was.

It was the first time that she'd stood face to face with him, and she was struck by the reminder that he was really quite a bit taller than she was. The lines on his face and his grey hair belied his age, but he had none of the air of frailty of the men his age that Rogue had known before. Was it part of his mutation that he still seemed physically formidable, or was it just his astonishing will and ambition that made him so? Rogue was staring at him, remembering all too well her time as his captive, fearing for her life.

"Why bother to play at resisting me, my dear?" he asked her pleasantly, crossing his arms as he peered down at her. "It's not as if I'm trying to make you do anything against your will. You are hungry for company and I am willing to provide it. Shall we be done with the games now then? You can just show up on time from now on, as I don't like to be kept waiting."

She half-heartedly shook her head in denial, and he reached down and took her gloved hand and tucked it into the crook of his arm. She noticed that he was wearing gloves himself, even though the weather wasn't cool enough today to call for it. That heartened her slightly as he began to lead her down the street. He didn't completely dismiss her as harmless.

"Shouldn't we go into the cafe?" she asked, then cursed herself for phrasing it as a question.

He glanced down at her. "I thought that we could enjoy a walk together today. Within a month, it'll be too chilly to enjoy the streets very much."

If anything, strolling through New York on Magneto's arm was even more surreal than sitting in a cafe drinking tea with him. She tried to tug away from him, but he closed his other hand around hers and held it in place.

"I can walk on my own," she said petulantly.

"Of course you can," he agreed easily. "But I prefer you like this." He paused and turned and looked down at her. "There's really no need to make an issue of it, is there?" he asked reasonably, and yet his eyes touched on a metal bench nearby as he asked it, and she understood his threat implicitly.

Her stomach clenched into a knot. "You just said that you're not trying to get me to do anything against my will," she forced herself to point out, and he smiled.

"Indeed I did. But I am, after all, who I am. We must make some allowances." He resumed his easy stroll, and she nearly stumbled for a moment before she fell in beside him.

"What do you want from me?" she asked, eyes darting around at passersby and storefronts that they passed, trying to guess where he was leading her.

"Why, Rogue, considering that it was nothing more than happenstance that we met in that cafe on Saturday, I don't see why you should suspect me of having some dastardly plan. Or do you think that I set that up after all?"

She chewed on the inside of her lip and had to concede that she did believe that it'd been a coincidence. One facilitated by his presence in her mind, of course, but not planned by the actual man. "No, I don't think you set it up, but you're not interested in anyone unless they serve some purpose of yours," she finally replied.

He patted her hand where it rested on his arm. "Fair enough. And at present, that purpose is nothing more than my own amusement."

It actually surprised her a bit that he just answered her charge instead of meeting it with some sort of parry, and she glanced up at him. She didn't know if she believed his answer, but it was at least straightforward, not some kind of riddle that she was supposed to figure out. "I don't see what's so amusing about toying with a teenaged girl and making me suck out your powers in a way that hurts us both."

He quirked an eyebrow at her as he led her across a busy street. "No young woman who looks at a man like me the way that you do," he said slowly, as if explaining it to a child, "should act too oblivious to the pleasures of certain painful things."

She froze for a moment until he tugged her along, repeating what he'd said in her head, her face becoming hot. "What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded angrily, trying to pull away from him again.

His hand closed over her wrist in a painful grip as he turned and looked at her. No, there was no frailty in him, and he compressed the small bones of her wrist together in a way that made her gasp. Her heart was racing again and she stared up at him with her lips slightly parted as fear surged anew.

"That look, Rogue, the one that you're giving me right now," he murmured in a cold, amused voice. "You may be too foolish to realize what you're feeling right now, but I'm certainly not."

His implication terrified her. That couldn't be true. He was trying to confuse her. "Pissed off is what I'm feeling," she snapped in spite of her fear.

Magneto took a step closer in to her. "Yes. But that's not all." His voice was low and intimate, and he leaned in and brushed his lips against her temple slowly enough for the pull to start, and though she tried to jerk away it wasn't in time.

Rogue nearly choked as she wrenched herself away from him, and this time he let her go. She was shocked by the feelings of amused arousal that he was experiencing as he hurt her. Her hand flew to her mouth as she stared at him, appalled.

"You're sick," she whispered, and he merely laughed as he took her hand and began to pull her along again.

"As I pointed out when last we met, no more than you are. I just don't have to sulk around pretending that I'm not going to show up because I don't understand my own reasons for coming."

They turned a corner and a harried-looking woman with a bag of groceries and a toddler on one hip almost ran into them, but Magneto deftly maneuvered them out of her way. "Sorry," the woman blurted, half-turning, and he responded by touching the edge of his hat briefly and smiling at her with a polite, "Don't mention it, madam."

Rogue shook her head as if to clear it, confused by the difficulty of reconciling the sadistic terrorist who enjoyed hurting teenaged girls with the mannered, distinguished gentleman who still tipped his hat at harried mothers in the street. Rogue didn't consider herself the most analytical of girls, but it made no sense.

Magneto seemed content to let her stew in silence for a while. He paused briefly at a boutique window with a display of evening dresses in it and gestured at a dark green gown in a shimmery fabric that was cut with sweeping lines. "You would look lovely in that," he observed before resuming their stroll. "With a corset, though," he added.

"No one wears corsets anymore," she replied shortly, though her mind was still on the exchange they'd just had. "I bet you can't even buy them."

He said nothing, leading her across another street.

"You're probably old enough to be my grandfather," she blurted suddenly.

He glanced down at her again, and she almost regretted her words as she saw that he was actually looking a bit irritated now. "Is this supposed to be an argument about why you couldn't possibly be attracted to me, Rogue?"

When he simply called her on it like that, Rogue felt embarrassed, her cheeks reddening. She glanced away. "I'm just saying."

"I confess that I'm not sure _what_ you're saying, my dear. The only reason that I can see for us to discuss the difference in our ages would be if we were contemplating something that is usually frowned upon between older men and younger women."

"That wasn't what I meant," she said sullenly.

He smiled. "Ah. Wasn't it." It wasn't a question.

After another few moments, Magneto put his other hand over hers in the crook of his arm again. "Well, the afternoon is getting on, Rogue," he observed. "I'll walk you back to your apartment before I go."

She stopped dead then, and he didn't try to pull her along. "You know where I live?" she asked hoarsely.

"Well, no, I haven't bothered to find out," he replied, studying her again. "You shall have to lead the way."

"No."

Magneto turned to face her. "Pardon me?"

Rogue's mouth went dry at the look that he was giving her, but she steeled herself. Her inner Logan was rallying at her display of defiance. "All of this is bad enough," she said, praying that her voice would stay steady. "But I ain't telling you where I live."

"Rogue," he drawled slowly, as if striving for patience. "I could find out for myself quite simply."

"Well, I guess you could try." She crossed her arms. "But that doesn't mean I'm gonna tell you."

Magneto closed his eyes briefly and sighed. "I had forgotten how tiresome teenagers could be," he said irritably. "Perhaps I should just use the same methods of discipline with you that I do with the Brotherhood. Defying me is not a good idea, my dear."

Rogue glanced around. There were plenty of people around, and while Magneto was certainly not afraid to draw attention to himself, she hoped that he wouldn't find this strange little thing between them to be worth revealing himself. "I ain't part of your Brotherhood, Magneto. Maybe you could 'discipline' me and maybe you couldn't, but if you make me hate you then I got no reason to hang around." Her heart was pounding as she spoke the words, but she did it nonetheless.

One corner of his mouth quirked upward for a moment. "Is that an admission that you like me?"

"No."

Suddenly he didn't look amused. "Stop being a brat, Rogue. You'll let me escort you home or you simply won't see me again."

Some part of her froze with horror at the idea... some part of her knew that, for some reason, she would regret that very much. But evidently it wasn't the part in charge of her mouth at the moment, because she said, "Well, that'd be great!" She felt Logan's approval.

His mouth thinned into a line, and he turned and walked away from her.

She watched him for a second before the panic started to kick in. "Look," she called, "I don't mean to be rude. I just don't think I should tell you that."

He kept walking. Rogue chewed her lip as she watched him go. His stride didn't hesitate. She considered running after him long after she watched him turn a corner and pass out of her sight.

 _What the fuck are you doing, Rogue?_ she asked herself.

She found that she had no answer.


	4. Chapter 4

The days seemed to pass even more slowly than they had before Magneto had strolled into her life. Her shifts at work were interminable, and movies didn't seem to hold her interest. She still thought about calling the mansion, but she had no phone and she never found herself stopping at a pay phone. One afternoon about a week after he'd left her standing in the street, she stopped by a small community college and gathered up some brochures on their various programs.

She'd have to either use her legal name or actually go to the trouble of trying to create a fake identity if she wanted to enroll. If she did the former, she was fairly certain that an X-Man would be showing up on her doorstep within days.

She didn't know if she wanted that to happen or not. Who would come? Logan? Bobby? Maybe Storm, sent because Rogue didn't have some kind of history with her? Before she'd been stilled by tormented thoughts of the pity she would see in their eyes. Now she envisioned being confronted over her encounters with Magneto. If she'd been feeling more level-headed about the whole thing, she probably would have realized that no one would have truly blown their lid over two cups of tea in a public place and a mid-afternoon walk through Greenwich Village. They wouldn't have known how she thought about him all the time, how she in a way relished the feel of him in her head now, how she found herself distracted by things like silverware and fences.

How she fantasized about running into him again in the cafe. The one where she went every afternoon that she wasn't working, now.

They wouldn't have known the things that happened between her and Magneto in her fantasies.

It was nearly a month later, and she had decided to go ahead and enroll under her legal name. She'd been jittery since then, glancing around when she walked down the street, tensing slightly whenever she heard footsteps pass by her door in the hallway. It was a Wednesday afternoon when the knock finally came.

She'd been living there for over six months, and it was the first time that anyone had ever knocked on the door.

Rogue stared at the door silently for a moment, heart pounding, before she got up off the bed and crossed the room. She tugged on her gloves, bracing herself mentally as she prepared to turn the knob. Was she hoping for Bobby? For Logan? For a neighbor, asking for a cup of sugar? She didn't know.

It was funny, that while she'd envisioned many scenarios about Magneto appearing again -- at the cafe, on the street, even him walking in and sitting down next to her in one of her movies -- none of them had involved him just knocking on her front door.

She blinked up at him. He was wearing a wine-colored shirt with a crisp collar in a rich fabric, the sleeves rolled up at the forearm, and no gloves. His silver hair looked even more striking against the color than against the grey that he so often wore. He looked entirely out of place in her dingy, narrow hallway. Predictably, her inner Wolverine was already snarling.

"Are you going to invite me in, Rogue?"

"What?" she responded foolishly. "I mean yeah. Come in. I wasn't expecting it to be you." She stood aside awkwardly, still staring at him, and he brushed past her into her cramped, barely furnished studio. She closed the door and turned.

His eyes swept around the room assessingly, and Rogue found herself embarrassed. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other and nodded toward the small, discolored table with two folding chairs tucked against the wall near her kitchenette. "Uh, do you want to sit down? I can make some tea."

He didn't sneer at the suggestion as she'd expected him to. Instead he walked over to the table as one of the chairs moved itself out and turned so that he could sit in it and look at her.

The unabashed reminder of his power was unsettling. He'd barely used it when they'd been together in public.

"No need to bother with the tea," he told her. "You Americans have no idea how to make it."

"I make it exactly the way that you do," she replied, just a little bit challengingly.

At that, he smiled. "Ah, of course... Nonetheless, don't bother. I'm not here for the amenities." He paused, and she tried to think of something to say, something other than asking what he _was_ there for and thus opening the Pandora's box that had disturbed her so badly the last time they'd spoken. "Who were you expecting, then? Did I manage to drive you back into the arms of the X-Men, or have you actually left your apartment and made some friends since last I saw you?" He paused, as if startled by a thought. "You don't have a boyfriend, do you, Rogue?" His smile became unpleasant.

Rogue sat gingerly on the edge of the bed, well away from him and his touch. "I enrolled at a college last week. I had to use my real name. I figure someone'll show up soon."

Magneto studied her thoughtfully. "And are you looking forward to that?"

Rogue shrugged. "I dunno."

Magneto raised an eyebrow, and Rogue turned as she heard a noise to her right, on top of her bureau. A brush lifted itself and moved quickly toward her, and when she reflexively held up a hand to fend it off, it pulled up and rapped her on the knuckles, then returned itself to the bureau. She cursed herself for owning anything that had metal in it as she rubbed her hand and glared at him peevishly.

"Are you looking forward to that?" he repeated evenly.

"You know, friendly acquaintances don't smack each other on the knuckles for not answering questions the way they'd like," she pointed out.

Magneto's smile was sinister. "Is that what you'd like to pretend that we are this week? Friendly acquaintances?"

 _Oh no._ This was feeling like dangerous territory again. She never should have made any allusion to characterizing their relationship. She turned her head and looked at him from behind her chair, her cheeks coloring. She hated how easily he made that happen.

"I think it's time to dispense with the games once and for all, my dear," he told her, rising from his chair. "If you've done something to attract the attention of the X-Men again, then it's time for me to take a little greater control of the situation."

Rogue stood also, not wanting him towering over her. "There's no situation to control," she told him, and this time her voice was trembling slightly no matter how much she wished it weren't. It was impossible to keep it steady with him advancing on her like this.

 _He's not wearing gloves_ , she reminded herself desperately. _He can't touch me._

That didn't seem to deter him as he moved into her personal space, and Rogue had no choice other than to back away from him, toward the wall. "Are you persisting with that nonsense?" he asked casually. She yanked her right glove off and dropped it as swiftly as she could as he backed her squarely into the wall, which merely made him smirk.

"I'm not afraid of your touch," he reminded her wryly. "As you well know." His sharp blue gaze traveled over her face, and with his proximity it made her feel a little breathless.

"If I hold on, you'll go down," she rasped. "Even you can't stop that."

"Then try it." Why did he look so unalarmed?

After a long beat passed in silence, he raised one hand and lifted a white strand of her hair from beside her face. "No?" His finger trailed down her cheek then, lightly, just long enough for the pull to start, and just a little bit of his arousal surged straight into her. She whimpered.

"What are you doing?" she whispered fearfully. "You can't touch me. Not for real."

"Can't I?" He looked amused. "Take off your shirt, Rogue."

Rogue's eyes widened. "What? Are you insane?"

"I believe that I am, according to several official reports from the UN," he mocked. "But that's quite beside the point. I'm entirely serious about you removing that sweater."

She swallowed. "Why?" It sounded stupid, but it was all she could think of to say.

He tilted his head, and it was clear how absurd he found her question. "Because I wish to see your breasts, my dear. Now do as I say, or I'll do it for you."

Her gaze flickered past him, noting the metal bedframe, the metal chairs in her dining room, a metal reading lamp attached to a side table, more metal implements in her kitchen than she had ever realized that she possessed. He noted her reaction and, smiling threateningly, rattled the bed where it sat just a bit. There was no doubt that he could make good on his threat to strip her if she wasn't willing to reach out and grab him for long enough to take him down.

She slowly raised her arms and pulled her sweater over her head. She dropped it to the floor beside them and tried to press back further into the wall, as if she could put more space between their bodies. She was wearing a grey cotton bra, and was mortified by the knowledge that her nipples were quite visibly tightened beneath it.

"Your undergarment, also," he instructed, and some small part of her almost scoffed at the fact that he didn't say bra, but her throat was far too tight to do that.

She complied. It seemed somehow a bit easier, now that she'd already done it once, except that now she was actually baring her breasts to him. His intentions were clear enough, and she wouldn't have obeyed the first command if there wasn't some part of her that wanted to do it. Her face had never been so flushed in her life.

He looked pleased, which elicited a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach. His eyes moved over her torso assessingly, the way they had moved over her apartment when he first walked in. Then he reached up to finger her white lock again, and she felt as if she were frozen in place.

"What are you going to do now?" she asked him breathlessly.

"Do you think I came unprepared for this?" He pulled his lightweight leather gloves from his back pocket and tugged them on.

She watched this, fully enthralled. If there was one thing that Rogue knew in detail, it was gloves, and his were exquisitely expensive and butter soft, molded snugly to his hands and with flawless seams. They stopped at the wrist, leaving several inches of his forearm unprotected beneath the rolled cuffs of his shirt.

He reached up and ran a finger over her lower lip and she groaned aloud at the impossibly soft, cool texture. "You hate having to wear them, but you like watching a man put them on with the obvious intention of touching you," he murmured teasingly.

Her eyelids fluttered closed. "I've never watched a man do that before," she responded vaguely.

"Really?" There was an amused note to his voice. "I saw that reaction that very first day, when I put them on to leave the cafe." His hand was traveling slowly over her cheek, down the side of her throat, over her collarbone. "It was what first made me realize how I affect you."

"That was--that was different," she managed to say. "I was just scared, because of what you did to me before. I didn't--it wasn't because of this."

He leaned forward, so close that she could feel his breath on the side of his face. "Yes it was. You simply hadn't noticed yet."

His fingers were ghosting over her skin lightly, over the upper swell of her breasts. She heard herself make a sound that she had never made with Bobby.

"It's clear to me how strongly you respond to my dominance, dear girl." His feather-light touch traced the outside curve of her breast. "I wonder if you will find my sadism as compelling."

Her knees literally felt weak. "I'm not--I don't like that," she protested weakly.

"Don't you? Let's find out." He finally dragged his fingers across her nipple, and Rogue moaned. She'd turned her face far to the side so that she didn't have to look at him.

He tugged a bit on her nipple, pulling the little bud tight. "How does that feel?"

Rogue chewed her lip, not wanting to admit it. His touch disappeared and she felt bereft.

"Answer me."

"It felt good," she choked out, and he caressed her again, rolling her nipple lightly between his fingers. This was similar to how Bobby had touched her, and she had loved it from him, had become intensely aroused, but she had never felt this _overwhelmed_ by it.

"So you like this. Most women like this," he observed. "What about this?" He tugged much harder on her nipple then, and his other hand came up to wrap around her throat. His fingers and thumb pressed in under her jaw, turning her face back toward him. What he was doing didn't exactly hurt, but it felt... intense.

Rogue actually arched toward him, squeezing her eyes shut as he turned her face. His lower hand ran across her collar bone and squeezed her other breast firmly, then began to pinch the nipple on that side. Rogue's own hands scrabbled against the wall... she refused to reach out toward him, no matter how badly she wanted to grasp at his arms.

"How does this feel, Rogue?" he asked, brushing his mouth against her temple until her powers flared and they both gasped a bit.

Once again she refused to respond and he pulled his hand away from her breasts and she whimpered. "Are we going to have to do this every time I want an answer from you?" he asked her, and she scrunched her eyes even tighter.

"It felt good, god dammit," she ground out, and could almost feel him smile despite her refusal to look.

"Good," he said. "Now open your eyes for me."

She tried to turn her head away again, and his thumb dug in cruelly under her jawbone to prevent it. "Rogue, you want to do what I say. It'll be easier for you if you do."

"I can't," she pleaded. "I can't just do whatever you tell me to." She was shaking hard against the wall, but he didn't press his body into hers like she wished he would. One hand at her breast and the other at her throat was still her only stimulation.

"Why ever not?" he asked her as if she were being ridiculous. His hand was grasping her breast roughly now, his fingers digging into her flesh.

"You tried to kill me!" she cried, trying now to turn her head to the other side, which he also prevented.

He chuckled, a low, dangerous sound. "Do you think that I'm trying to kill you right now?" he asked in amusement.

She only moaned, pushing away from the wall, toward him.

"Open your eyes," he suddenly snapped in a hard voice, and for some reason her eyes flew open and locked on his face. He was so close to her--so close, his piercing gaze had her pinned to the wall as effectively as his hand on her throat, and the slightly silky fabric of his shirt brushed against her chest.

He pinched down on her nipple, hard, staring into her eyes, and she moaned loudly and writhed but could not look away. Her hands finally flew up to grasp at his upper arms, twisting at the material of his shirt.

"Does that hurt?" he asked, and his voice was no longer so casual.

"Yess.." she hissed, trying to pull away, but with nowhere to go.

His fingers were relentless on her flesh. "And yet you like it," he observed, and this was not a question. She cried out, trying to press her body against his, anything for relief from the pain that he was inflicting.

He eased up, finally, and Rogue exhaled loudly and nearly slumped. Her eyes were glassy as she continued to stare up at him, as he'd not given her leave to look away.

"Rogue?" he murmured quietly, and his gaze almost looked kind now, which made her wish wildly that he could kiss her.

"Mmm?" His hand was still stroking her breasts, tweaking their now-aching peaks.

"Did I tell you that you could touch me?"

She blinked, his warning tone in contrast to the expression on his face, and slowly lifted her hands away from his arms. She hadn't even really realized what she'd been doing. She stifled an irrational impulse to apologize, trying to remind herself that he was the freak here, not her.

Nonetheless, her transgression made her nervous, and he smiled at her nervousness.

"Now, turn around, my dear," he instructed gently. Some vague part of her reminded her that she shouldn't simply obey him, and yet she did, slowly, turning so that she faced the wall, her head turned to see what she could over her shoulder.

He grasped her wrists -- one of them still gloved, the other bare -- and lifted them up by her head, pressing them into the wall. "Do you need a reminder to keep them there?" he asked, and she visualized what such a "reminder" might be.

"No," she breathed, and he snorted.

Now, now he pressed the length of his body against the back of her, and his hands slid over her hips and deftly unbuttoned the fly of her jeans, pushing them down onto her hipbones.

A sound escaped her as his hand slid into her panties, parted her flesh, dipped downward to draw some of her moisture up through her cleft, and then immediately pressed against the nub of her aroused clit.

"You'll ruin your gloves," she blurted in a strangled whisper.

His left hand came up to cover hers on the wall, and he leaned forward against her as he rubbed her. "I couldn't possibly care any less."

It had taken a great deal of experimenting with Bobby to figure out how she liked to be touched, but Magneto unerringly found a motion that worked almost right away, pressing his fingers just to the side of her clit instead of directly on top and applying a rhythmic, indirect pressure that provided the right amount of stimulation. Her eyes fluttered closed as she wondered heatedly just how many women he'd gotten off with their faces pressed up against a wall.

"It takes me… a long time to get there." Her voice was strained, and she was panting hard, pressing back into his body.

"I hardly have all day," he replied, matching his rhythm to her gasps. "I suggest that you work for it."

She found herself mewling, shocked by how quickly she was feeling the delicious pressure build low in her groin. "Tell me before you get there," he demanded, and she found herself almost rocking against his hand, urging him to the direction and rhythm that her body was responding to.

It didn't take nearly as long as she was used to. "I'm almost--" she gasped, torn between pushing forward against his hand and pushing backward against his body, her fingers pressing into the wall near her head.

The hand that was covering hers on the wall slid down her arm, across her shoulder, and wrapped around her neck again. Rogue's vision swam as he squeezed her throat tight, pressing painfully on the sides.

"Ask me for permission," he said, and for just an instant he slowed his rhythm and she felt her orgasm begin to recede.

It was a heartless tactic... at any other moment she would have refused, but now she was on the brink and all she wanted in the world was to tip over that glorious edge, and so she didn't even have time to rally in defiance before she found herself gasping, "Oh god, please let me come, please let me come!" She could barely get the words out past the strangling pressure of his hand on her throat, but she forced herself to.

"You may come," he breathed, his fingers quickly giving her what she needed and the hand at her throat squeezing so hard that she actually wondered wildly if she was about to pass out and found that she didn't care at all as long as she got to...

Rogue disintegrated into orgasm, a nearly full-voiced shriek escaping her as she pushed back against his body as hard as she could. He actually stumbled slightly and shifted his stance, but somehow prevented it from interrupting his stimulation of her as she continued to climax violently.

Her hands flew back to grasp at him of their own volition, finding purchase on his hips. "Get your hands off me," he hissed and through a white-dark haze of pleasure she slammed her hands against the wall again.

"Oh god oh god oh god oh god," was all she could say, the words slurred, and her knees finally literally begin to give out as her the peak of her orgasm passed and began to wane.

The hand buried in her panties came up and wrapped around her torso and pulled her backward. There was nothing left in her that could possibly resist as he turned and pushed her onto the foot of the bed and stood over her, looking down at her limp form and smirking.

She cupped one of her hands over her mons, almost protectively. "Is it over?" she asked stupidly.

He laughed. "For now."

He waited for a moment while her brain tried to reassemble itself into some kind of order. He put one foot up on the bed beside her and leaned on his knee and passed a gloved hand over his forehead, and she smiled just a little to note the light sheen of sweat on his lined face.

"What the fuck?" was all she could think of to say, and he shook his head in mild consternation at her vulgarity.

"I won't be in New York again for a while," he told her conversationally, pulling his gloves from his hands -- she saw the right one still glistening -- and tucking them into his back pocket again as he stood over her. "I was simply passing through today. But I'm concerned about you attracting the attention of your old friends."

Rogue blinked up at him. NOW he wanted to chat? "I'm not going back there," she said, and she hadn't realized until she said it that that much, at least, was true. Her life might be lonely and isolated, but it was here and it was her own, and that was what she needed right now.

"Not even for the Wolverine?" he asked, raising a brow at her. "For that's who they'll send, if they're smart. He'll probably have to pull rank on that boyfriend of yours, which will cause some tension on the team. But the X-Men know your weaknesses as well as I do, so they'll send Wolverine."

She didn't like hearing him speak of Logan, didn't like the look on his face when he did, didn't like hearing Logan described in terms of a weakness, didn't like Magneto's allusion to knowing her weaknesses himself. "You don't know what you're talking about," she said rudely, rebuttoning her jeans and sitting up.

He moved without warning, and suddenly his bare hand was tangled in a fistful of her hair at the nape of her neck and he was tilting her head back to look up at him. It was a painful reminder that she should not be feeling safe with him in the room. "They can't have you back," he told her forcefully, and she found herself caught squarely between anger and fear and desire.

"I don't belong to you," she managed to respond, trying to pull away unsuccessfully.

His stare was cold and hard, and he looked like he was about to say something else, but instead he released her and strode over to the door.

"What are you going to study?"

The shift in his tone and demeanor was almost enough to leave her dizzy. "Uh. Art."

He nodded and turned by the door to look at her. "And when do you start?"

"I'm starting the summer semester. So two months."

"I'll be back in a month," he said. "I'll need to spend a few days in San Francisco. I'll take you with me."

"What?" She shook her head as if to clear it. "You want to take me on a vacation?"

He smiled at her confusion. "Something like that. You need some new clothes. Your fashion sense is… regrettable."

Rogue looked around, as if there might be some explanation for what he was saying elsewhere in the room. "You're taking me on a _shopping_ vacation in San Francisco?"

Magneto gazed at her for a long moment, and his expression became serious. "Remember, my dear, the Wolverine may be an animal, but he has too many illusions of nobility to be willing or able to give you what I can." The door opened, and Magneto slipped out before she could think of anything to say or do other than watch him go.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

Magneto had been right. It was Logan who came.

He walked into the diner where she was waitressing, got himself seated, and ordered a cup of coffee.

It was not so much shocking as just plain strange to come out of the back with a tray laden with enough chicken fingers for a family of four, and see him already there, sitting in a booth just like any other customer. Except he wasn't any other customer. He was Logan.

He glanced up at her and cocked an eyebrow, and Rogue just paused a moment, then smiled a little nervously, then went and gave her family their dinners. She passed by Logan on her way back to the kitchen.

"I get off at four," she told him, and he nodded.

He ate a piece of pie -- Jerry was his waiter, not Rogue -- and he left.

Rogue managed to get off the floor at five minutes before the hour, and she slipped into the bathroom. She was wearing a lightweight sweatshirt, so there wasn't much to do about that, but she washed her face and ran a brush through her hair and dabbed on a little lip gloss. She was no fashion plate -- she flashed back to Magneto's comment about her regrettable fashion sense -- but she would do.

She slung her backpack over her shoulder and stepped out into the temperate night air. Logan was leaning against a wall, smoking. Absolutely nothing about him looked even minutely different from the last time she'd seen him. She felt a familiar ache in her chest.

"Hey Logan."

"Hey kid."

Rogue glanced around.

"C'mon, I'll walk you home." She ducked her head and started off toward her place, and Logan fell in beside her, his hands shoved into his pockets. "So how ya been?"

Rogue shrugged. "Okay, I guess. Better now than before."

He made a sound of acknowledgment. "Well, all the geeks say hi. Everyone really misses ya."

Rogue kicked a bit at the pavement as she walked. There was a long pause while she tried to decide what to say to that. "Yeah. I miss everyone, too."

"Popsicle misses you a lot, still." There was a strange tone to his voice, but Rogue couldn't place it. Was it reproach? Curiosity? Did he actually sound hurt himself?

"I miss him too," Rogue said slowly.

A couple of minutes passed, and Rogue led them around the corner onto her street. "He really wanted to be the one to come, you know. But I thought maybe you'd rather it was me."

 _Is_ that _why you were chosen? For_ my _comfort?_ Rogue was surprised by the wave of cynicism that washed over her, her mouth narrowing, knowing its source.

 _I shouldn't have let him touch me ever again after the Statue of Liberty_ , she thought self-reproachfully, then tried to keep from blushing as memories rose up that she didn't want in her head with Logan here beside her.

"So who tried to choke you to death?" he asked suddenly, and though his voice sounded casual, Rogue could just detect the undercurrent of anger.

So much for banishing those memories.

Her hand flew to her neck, which of course immediately gave her away. "Shit," she mumbled aloud, her face flaming red in the lamplight, and Logan looked at her sideways.

"Huh. So it was like that. Wouldn't have pegged ya for that, kid."

Rogue vaguely thought that she might die. Everything that she could think of to say just seemed like it would make things worse. How much redder could she possibly get?

After another minute, Logan actually stopped and turned toward her. Rogue paused, but didn't turn. She lowered her head, biting her lip.

"Rogue?"

She wrapped her arms more tightly around her torso, and he grabbed her upper arm and gently pulled her to face him.

"What the -- what's going on here Rogue? If you like it a little rough that's your business, but those are some serious bruises and this is a really weird reaction you're having."

"They're not serious," she mumbled. "No one at work even noticed."

"Yeah, well, no one at Lucky's Diner there has seen enough bruises to be able to tell what those looked like four days ago. You were wearing a scarf to work until yesterday, weren't ya?"

"Leave it alone, Logan," she said peevishly, unable to meet his gaze. She sounded vaguely rebellious, but inside she was terrified that he was going to press this. She'd already mucked it up horribly.

Logan pinned her with a look that was half-puzzled, half-annoyed. "You know, I thought I was gonna come here and act like your friend instead of your fucking father, which is what Bobby would have done. I've never treated you like a kid, even when I wanted to; I've always told you to trust your instincts instead of telling you what to do. But now you've managed to get me worried, you know that?"

Rogue glanced up at him, saw his hazel eyes regarding her narrowly. "You've always called me 'kid'," was all she could think of to say.

Logan snorted. "Yeah. But I never treated you like one."

She said nothing, just shifted from one foot to the other, and after a moment he exhaled in exasperation.

"Well, c'mon. Are we almost there?" He resumed walking in the direction they had been going.

Rogue led him the rest of the way to her studio. It was only as she was turning the key in the lock that she had a sudden chilling thought.

_Would Logan still be able to smell Magneto in there?_

It had been three days. Surely that was long enough for his scent to fade.

_Jesus Christ._

"Kid?"

Rogue flailed mentally for an excuse not to go inside. Logan was staring at her strangely again and the key was shaking in her hand. If she didn't do something, she was just going to make it much, much worse.

She couldn't think of anything. She just had to pray that he couldn't smell it. Rogue tried to exhale slowly and compose herself as she reluctantly turned the key in the lock. There was nothing for it other than to take her chances.

She swung open the door and led the way inside.

Logan glanced around, but with little of the judgment that she'd seen in Magneto when he'd done the same thing. To Logan, one place to sleep was pretty much like any other place to sleep. He probably didn't even notice that her furniture was mismatched.

Rogue tried to act casual as she threw her jacket over a chair and headed toward the fridge. "You want a glass of water, Logan? I don't have anything stronger." Her shoulders were painfully tense as she waited for his snarl of outrage.

Logan sat on the edge of the bed. His frame was so heavy that the bed squeaked in protest. He didn't seem to be reacting to anything in the environment.

"Tell me what the hell is going on, Rogue."

She glanced at him, and his eyes softened a bit. "Marie," he corrected himself, and she felt herself melt, just like she had as a kid when he was still playing her hero.

She finished pouring herself some water, and grabbed one of the folding chairs and put it by the bed. She sat down and propped her feet up next to him and looked at her glass.

She smiled ruefully. "You know about the kitten? The one that me and my roommate got?"

"Yeah. Storm talked to the girl. She told her the story." Logan's voice sounded slightly less angry now that it looked like she was gonna talk.

"I know a kitten probably doesn't seem like much, but it was a really fucking awful way for my mutation to come back." She shrugged uncomfortably. "Not to whine. I mean, I guess it wasn't that bad next to being cut up and experimented on. But it sucked."

Logan just nodded, watching her. He wasn't the world's most articulate guy, but if there was one thing that he could do when he wanted to, it was listen.

Well, that and kill people.

She looked up at him now, her mind now off her fears that her bizarre tryst with Magneto would be discovered, just relishing the fact that she was finally getting to talk, really talk, to someone who really cared about her.

"I just couldn't take it, Logan. I know it was cowardly, but I couldn't face you all. I couldn't face the reassurances and the things that people would say and, and all the fucking _pity_."

"I wouldn't have pitied you," Logan said simply.

Rogue made a frustrated gesture. "Maybe not you. But everyone else would have."

He didn't argue that point, and Rogue took a slow sip of her water. His brow was furrowed with concern.

"Anyway, there's not much story to it. I left college, I found this place, I got a job. That's what I've been doing. I finally have enough energy that I'm gonna go back to school and study art for a while. I'm gonna work with my hands, Logan. I want to sculpt."

He frowned at her and ran a hand through his hair. "You're not even thinkin' about coming back, are ya?"

Rogue looked at him, and for a moment she entertained the old fantasy that he wanted her. Then her eyes were drawn to the wall that Magneto had pressed her against as she came, screaming, and the fantasy of Logan seemed awfully remote, even with him sitting there in front of her.

She still wanted him, she did. But... there was nothing solid about it. Nothing to hold onto.

_He has too many illusions of nobility to be willing or able to give you what I can._

And Bobby? She remembered that she'd felt intense things for him, but she didn't seem to be able to remember what they were anymore.

"I think I'd like to come back someday, Logan. It wouldn't be like before, you know, but I think I could come back and be a part of the school somehow, someday, maybe. But not right now."

Logan's mouth tightened as he glanced around the room. "I guess I should tell Popsicle that you ain't waitin' around for him, huh?"

Rogue blinked. "He didn't wait around for me, did he?" She'd been certain all this time that Bobby and Kitty would have gotten together after she disappeared. The thought was difficult for her, but not exactly bad.

"He hasn't been a monk," he admitted. "But if you did decide to come back..."

Rogue shook her head. "No. He's better off with Kitty."

She expected him to argue that, but instead he was staring at the dingy wall behind her with a distinctly uncomfortable look. "Maybe he wasn't the only one who wasn't waiting around, but who would take notice if you did decide to come back."

Rogue stared at Logan, turning over what he'd said. Surely she misunderstood him. _Illusions of nobility, my dear. He won't follow through._

"Do you mean...?" She couldn't bring herself to say anything more. Her throat felt suddenly dry, but she couldn't seem to take another drink of her water.

Logan made a frustrated sound in his throat, and finally looked at her. "I don't know what I mean," he growled. "Who put the bruises on your throat?"

This time Rogue didn't look away from him. "It was just a one time thing, Logan," she lied, surprised by how believable she sounded. "I let him get a little carried away, which is why I'm not gonna see him again. But he didn't actually hurt me."

A long moment passed while they looked at each other. "You got other bruises?" His voice sounded strangely hoarse, and Rogue wondered what exactly was happening here. If it wasn't Logan, she would have thought that things were becoming... charged. That it was the thought of where else she might have bruises that was getting him wound up.

There was a time when she would have given a limb just to have his attention the way that she seemed to now, even if it went no further. Now, she felt some of the same old confused longing, but she was distracted by Magneto whispering in her ear.

"No, no other bruises," she lied again.

His gaze wandered over her, but his expression was conflicted, and Rogue exhaled. "Logan?"

"What?"

She licked her lips and made herself speak calmly. "You know that you're not really willing to do this. So knock it off." She could hardly believe the words coming out of her mouth. She would have thought they were Erik's, but he wouldn't have phrased it the way that she had.

 _That_ took him aback, and for a moment he just stared at her. Then he raked a hand through his hair and snorted.

"Well, that's not the same Marie who told me she didn't want me to go to Alkali Lake with those big eyes. Broke my heart so bad that I had to leave a piece of myself behind with her."

Rogue actually laughed, and if it wasn't entirely good-natured, it wasn't entirely bitter either. "It is the same Marie, Logan, she just got a little older. And she doesn't like tormenting herself with things that she can't really have any more."

Logan shifted on the bed. "Maybe--"

"No. Not unless you mean it. And you don't."

He sighed in exasperation. "I could mean it."

Rogue shook her head, stood up, and sat herself down on his lap, straddling him. Logan made a choked noise, and Rogue grabbed one of his hands and lifted it straight to her breast. He jerked away as if burned, his expression alarmed, and she gave him a rueful smile.

The heat of his body was amazing, and Rogue could not deny her arousal, but she'd known what would happen. "See?" she said pointedly.

He stared at her a moment, then narrowed his eyes and angled his mouth over hers, kissing her roughly.

 _No!_ snapped her inner Erik, completely enraged. The pull started and Rogue jerked away from him, backing off his lap and away from him, her hand over her mouth.

"Why'd you do that?" she asked, stunned, feeling the primal rush of him rattle through her brain for a moment.

"Fuck if I know!" he snarled, slamming his hand into the bed. "I don't want someone else grabbing you by the throat!"

Rogue took a deep breath. "Logan, you need to go."

"What?"

She composed herself and moved behind the chair, putting her gloved hands on its back. "I'm serious. Look, I'm not gonna disappear again. I'll call. But I can't do this right now. Please. Just go."

He threw up his hands. "I thought you had this big crush on me," he said with frustration.

"Look, I did, and maybe in a way I still do. But you're not gonna give me what I really want from you, so I don't want to do this. I'm not gonna watch you go back and forth over how this ain't right, or whatever this thing you're doing in your head is. I don't even know what it is. I just want you to get out." The words came out in a rush, and Rogue didn't even know if she believed them all.

But she knew that Logan was scared to touch her breast, while Magneto had stripped her half-naked and made her come pressed against a wall.

Slowly Logan stood and crossed to the door. He looked back at her, but she was looking away and didn't meet his gaze.

"You... be careful. Until we talk again. Soon," he told her awkwardly, and then she heard the door close behind him.


	6. Chapter 6

Rogue didn't know exactly when Magneto would be showing up for her, but it wasn't like she had much to pack, and she could always call off from work sick for a few days since she hadn't taken any time off in the months she'd worked there.

She was actually getting ready to go in for a shift when the knock came. She looked down at her hooded sweatshirt and ratty jeans, and thought that Magneto's opinion of her ability to dress herself was not about to improve.

He looked quite handsome, in a formal kind of way, when she answered the door... usually she'd seen him in his vaguely military-style grey sweaters, or in his uniform. Today he wore a black suit with a crisp white shirt, tie, trenchcoat, and hat. His wingtip shoes were flawlessly polished. She gazed at him, thinking that maybe it was the severity of the colors and the expensive, unrumpled cut that made him look intimidating and distinguished instead of grandfatherly.

Or maybe it was just him, the way he wore it.

He smiled down at her. "Good morning, Rogue. Are your things gathered?"

"I didn't know when you'd be coming," she said, moving aside for him to enter, then closing the door and grabbing her backpack and disappearing into the bathroom. He opted to stand and wait, arms crossed.

"This wasn't here when last I was here," he commented, and she peeked out to see him looking at a framed picture of her, Bobby and Kitty that was sitting by the bed. He seemed to be in a mild mood this morning, and Rogue found it strange to be in his presence without feeling threatened or manipulated.

 _Enjoy it while it lasts_ , she thought to herself, sticking her toothbrush into a plastic case and shoving it into a pocket on her bag.

"You were right, they sent Logan," she called out to him. "It was no big deal, but it did get me thinking about my old friends."

"I see," he murmured, as Rogue came out of the bathroom and opened the small closet. She pulled out any clothes she had that weren't entirely casual... a few decent tops and long skirts and one dress that she rather liked.

"How cold will it be there in November?" she wondered aloud.

"Warmer than here, but quite chilly in the evenings," he responded. "You do have a coat, don't you?"

She flashed him a smile as she pulled her hooded green coat out of the back of the closet. She had always loved it and thought it quite stylish, and thought that if she had one thing that would escape his scoffing it was probably this.

"Our flight is at eleven," he said.

"I'm done," Rogue said, turning and zipping her backpack. One shirt still lay on the bed -- she thought that she'd change out of her frumpy work clothes before they left -- and suddenly she was seized by curiosity over whether _she_ could provoke _him_.

She turned and met his eyes and slowly pulled her sweatshirt over her head.

Magneto smirked, his eyes moving over her. She was blushing but feeling uncharacteristically bold as she pulled her sports bra off and picked up something a little prettier. The air was cool on her breasts, causing her nipples to pebble almost immediately.

"Our flight is at eleven," he repeated in a bored voice.

Pouting slightly, Rogue pulled on her underwire bra and a long-sleeved green shirt in a clingy, soft material, then pulled on some mid-length gloves.

"Come along, temptress," he said, picking up her bag and opening the door, and Rogue followed him out into the crisp air, ready to accompany him across the continent and not sure why.

Rogue received her first real shock of the day when he led her to a dark car parked at the curb and opened the back door for her. Confused, she climbed in and he followed her; she saw that there was a dark window that separated them from the driver, who pulled away from the curb without any further instructions from Magneto.  She'd rather assumed they'd take a cab. Or something. She didn't know how he got around, other than helicopters. And flying through the air.

"I can't believe I'm doing this," she said softly, acutely conscious of his body beside hers in the seat.

"I presume you've never been to San Francisco," he responded, tapping his fingers on the door. The whole interior seemed to be leather.

"No," she said. "We're just gonna get on an airplane? Like, it's not a private plane or something?"

"Yes, we are, though we'll be in First Class, of course. Under no circumstances do I fly coach."

Rogue had never traveled in First Class. "Isn't it a problem for you?" she said carefully. "I mean, being--"

"An internationally wanted terrorist?" he supplied scornfully, and she glanced over at him, wondering if she shouldn't have said it. She wasn't sure if the driver could hear them, or if they could speak freely if he could.

"I guess."

Magneto looked over at her then, and his face was cast into sharp planes in the tinted dimness of the car. Her breath caught in her throat as she suddenly found herself wondering just how many people he had killed in the name of his... cause.

"It won't be a problem. I won't have you passing through the normal security procedures, either. Too much potential for trouble."

She was with a man who could just arrange to bypass standard airport security. A terrorist.

He was probably the most wanted terrorist in the world, after Alcatraz, wasn't he?

Oh shit. Had she really not thought about who he was all this time, just because he made her feel -- the way he did.

"Are you rethinking our trip, Rogue?" he asked gently, and something about his tone struck a warning bell in her, and she clasped her hands in her lap.

"I dunno," she said, looking away, looking out the window as they crossed the bridge into Brooklyn.

"I find it hard to believe that you've never questioned Charles' ideals."

This was not a conversation that Rogue wanted to have. She sat silent, unresponsive.

"You are a practical girl, Rogue, not a theorizer or an idealist. You were driven from your home by the hostility of your own family and friends. Do you truly still hold the belief that humans and mutants can live together peacefully, or did you just try not to think about it too hard because you had finally found a place to fit in at Charles' school?"

"How do you know about my past?" she asked angrily.

At that, Magneto turned a bit, reached out a hand, and ran a bare finger along the white streak in her hair, reminding her how she'd come by it. "I knew from the beginning."

She gazed at him, mouth dry, and for the first time since he'd resurfaced in her life, she let herself fully remember that terrifying time as his captive, on top of the statue with him advancing on her, face with a trace of sadness, yes, but utter conviction and determination, reaching for her... _I am sorry, my dear_ , he had said...

Being in this car with him... it was the first time she'd been in an enclosed space with him, and suddenly she was with the aloof and inscrutable captor who had lectured her, terrorized her, and done his level best to actually murder her in that small metal chamber high above this very city. She had survived him only thanks to Logan. Logan, whose kiss she has shied away from because it didn't compare to the way that this lunatic touched her...

He was watching her eyes as if he could see it all play out. His expression was unworried, patient, but intent.

"I did not do it to harm you, Rogue, but to save mutantkind," he told her in a low voice. "I do not regret my choice, I will not apologize for it, and I promise you that I would do it again if the same things hung in the balance."

It was terrifying to have a seemingly rational man with the power to rip a bridge from its moorings with his mind look you in the eye and tell you that he was willing to kill you. Rogue simply could not believe that she'd let this same man slip his hand between her legs and make her writhe against him.

"I have made many terrible choices and done many terrible things and I regret none of them, my dear girl. You ought never to fool yourself about who I am, because I will kill more people before this foolish struggle is concluded."

She swallowed hard. "I may have questioned the Professor's ideals, but that doesn't mean that I will _ever_ approve of yours." She didn't know if he would kill her simply for saying that -- right now she knew only that she had no idea what he was willing to do under any circumstances -- but in this moment, fearful as she was, she would rather fight for her life than sit there silently while he spoke of murdering innocent people.

His smile was amused. "And I do not seek your approval. It is something quite different that I want from you." His hand skimmed lightly down her body and came to rest on her knee, and somehow, impossibly, she found herself shuddering with desire under his touch, instead of revolted by it. She turned her head away and he chuckled.

"But I see the doubt in your eyes when I speak, Rogue, and while you may not be willing to go to the extremes that I am to see this business finished, I know that you're well aware that Charles' way will get us nowhere. And you, my dear, you do not really want to hide in a cramped apartment and work a menial job for the rest of your life, always fearful of the humans around you discovering your true nature, and never again feeling the pleasure of bare skin against your own." He slid his hand up to her waist and under the hem of her shirt, skirting her side, and Rogue should have pushed it away but she didn't, and instead she felt the terrible/wonderful sensation of her skin pulling hungrily at his.

"Stop," she gasped, and he did, but he had held on long enough to make himself dizzy this time, and even he had to take a moment to compose himself after that. He'd accomplished his goal, though, for she felt the intoxicating rush of his complete certainly flow into her along with the lust.

Suddenly, with no reason that she understood, she turned to him and grasped at his jacket. "Make me come again, like last time," she begged desperately, gazing up at him with terrible need in her eyes.

He laughed at her and raised his bare hand tauntingly. "Make yourself come."

She whined and shifted, discomfited by the intensity of her desire. "I can't," she protested. "You have gloves."

"Indeed I do." He pulled them from the pocket of his trenchcoat and tugged them on, watching Rogue watch this with wild eyes. He grabbed her upper arms and twisted her away from him on the seat, then sat back and pulled her backward across his lap, so that she was half-arched with her legs splayed across the seat away from him.

He unbuttoned her jeans with his power instead of his hands, thrusting one hand between her legs and into her panties and pushing the other beneath her shirt to find her pert little breasts. Rogue lifted her hands above her head, grasping at his shoulders behind her.

"No," he said warningly, and she whimpered and lowered her hands to grasp at the seat beneath her.

He cupped his hand around the lovely curve of her mons and squeezed hard and she squealed. Then his fingers pressed in toward the heat of her passage, sliding easily through her slickness, and then simultaneously squeezed and pulled at the flesh of her labia on either side.

She twisted on his lap. "Fuck, that hurts," she breathed, squeezing her eyes tightly shut.

"I know," he told her with a smile. "That's why I'm doing it."

She pounded her hand on the seat and tried to choke back her protests. After a moment he slid his two middle fingers across the hottest part of her again and pressed inward with only a little pressure, and her eyes flew open and fixed on his.

"Do you want it, Rogue?" he asked mockingly.

"Yess.." One hand pressed over his through her jeans and he chuckled.

"Ask me for it. Convince me."

Her face was flushed as she opened her mouth twice but could not bring forth any words. Finally she just said, "Please..." and trailed off.

"Please what, my dear? I'm afraid I don't know what you're asking for." He punctuated his words by pressing his fingers in a small circle that made her feel spread open for him.

"Please put your fingers inside me." Her voice was barely audible, her eyes bright.

His smile was pleased. "No."

He drew his fingers upward and began to firmly rub her clit instead. Rogue's whimper of outrage segued immediately into a moan of pleasure, and she bucked beneath his hand.

She did not come as quickly as she had that first time in her apartment, but she was still surprised by how fast her orgasm came upon her. This time she managed to keep from grasping for him by tucking her hands beneath her as she arched up, tossing her head to one said and burying her face against his chest.

"I hope you're not wearing any makeup," he said, pulling his hand out of her panties and turning her face away from his white shirt.

"I'm not," she mumbled, embarrassed. She lay there with her head on his lap for several long moments, waiting for her breathing to return to normal, not sure what she was supposed to say or do. Last time he'd taken charge of the conversation and then left within minutes of finishing with her.

She couldn't believe she had begged for that. And on the heels of a conversation about what a monster he was. There was clearly something seriously wrong with her.

Her shirt was halfway rucked up and his still-gloved hand rested lightly on her tummy, stroking just slightly. He was still wearing his wool coat, which protected his forearm from the incidental contact that came from touching her, unlike the last time, when his sleeves had been rolled at the cuff.

Unlike last time.

Still fuzzy-headed from her orgasm, Rogue stared at his hand in puzzlement. She could envision them that last time -- her pressed against the wall, him behind her, arm wrapped around her, hand thrust between her legs.

She'd been shirtless. His sleeves had been rolled up when he pulled his gloves on; she remembered that vividly. At no point had he rolled them down.

How could he have done that without the skin of his inner forearm pressing against her lower abdomen?

Rogue blinked. Even close to orgasm, she would have noticed if she'd been drawing from him. It had taken her several long minutes to build up to it, far too long for him to remain on his feet if they'd been in skin-to-skin contact.

It just didn't make sense.

"Um," she said inelegantly. She wanted to say his name, but in this moment was no longer sure whether to address him as Erik or Magneto. Funny, that she was going to San Francisco with a man, and she didn't know how to address him.

"Erik?" she finally ventured, thinking she'd feel less silly saying that than the other.

"Yes?" His tone was far away, and she looked up to see him gazing out the window.

"How did you..." She trailed off, not sure how to ask what she wanted to. "How did you do that the first time without any contact between your arm and my stomach? Your sleeves were rolled up."

He didn't bother to look down at her. "I was careful," he responded.

Rogue squinted at the ceiling of the car. "I guess so." She still couldn't see how he could have done it without touching her at all, but he had, so it must have happened.

Magneto pushed her off his lap. "Put yourself back together, Rogue. We're almost at the airport."

Frowning, Rogue straightened out her clothing. She was still stewing as he pulled her from the car and led her into the airport.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Rogue was surprised when, once they were seated, Magneto pulled a leather folder from the satchel that he'd carried on and spent the time perusing various documents. There was a part of her that was curious about what they were, but a larger part that distinctly thought that she might be happier not knowing.

He hadn't brought incriminatory evidence with him on an airplane flight, had he?

She was surprised when he ordered two glasses of red wine from the flight attendant and handed one to her. He pulled his wallet out of an interior pocket of his coat, and she noticed that it had a silver M on one of the inside corners.

"You've had that a long time, but you take care of it," she commented with interest.

He raised an eyebrow at her. "You're right."

"The leather is worn around the edges, but it's still supple," she pointed out. "My mom got my dad a monogrammed wallet when I was a baby and he treated it with something a few times a year so that it would stay nice." Rogue tried a sip of the wine, hoping she didn't look too ridiculously unsophisticated.

Magneto smiled at her enigmatically. "Mine was a gift from Raven." For a moment she was puzzled, until her inner Erik pointed out to her snidely that he meant Mystique. He wasn't going to refer to Mystique by name in such a crowded space.

The idea of Mystique buying him such a thoughtful and personal gift -- the idea of her buying a gift at all, or him receiving one, or either of them having a relationship that involved intimate gift-giving -- was a little strange. She had a strong sense from his memories that Magneto and Mystique were or had been lovers, but the thought made her uncomfortable and she tried to turn her attention away from it.

She wondered if Mystique knew who Magneto was taking with him to San Francisco this weekend. She wondered if she cared.

"You've known her a long time," Rogue finally said.

"Watch the movie, Rogue," he told her, returning to his papers.

It was mid-afternoon when they arrived, as they'd gained a couple of hours flying west. Their luggage was the first to show up at the claim area, and they emerged blinking into a warm, breezy, sunny West Coast day.

Rogue looked around. Her first impression was of a hilly, dense suburb with a lot of highways. "We'll take a taxi to the city," he commented, and led her to the front of a line of cabs and arranged for exactly that.

"When we get there I should call the diner and tell `em I have the flu," Rogue said as she watched the character of the landscape change as the cab got closer to the city itself. She saw water off to the right of the highway sparkling in the midday glare of the sun. Though she wasn't sure of the city's geography, she could see land on the far side, so she guessed it had to be the bay, not the ocean. "How long are we gonna be here?"

"Three days," he answered, turning his sleek silver mobile phone back on and checking his voicemail. Once again Rogue was discomfited by the reminder of his "work." She'd always thought of Magneto's activities in terms of him attacking targets and holding clandestine meetings. She'd never thought of the phone calls or emails or paperwork that went into planning them.

She didn't really want to, either.

After a moment he put the phone away. "What are we gonna do while we're here?" she finally asked. They were coming around a corner between two hills, and Rogue's face lit up as the cityscape appeared before her.

"I have errands tomorrow and Friday, though I would encourage you to get out and see the city on your own. We're going to do some shopping this evening and we have reservations for Friday night, and Saturday I thought we'd do a bit of sightseeing together before we left."

It all sounded so genteel, and normal. Rogue bit her lip and peered out the windows as the cab maneuvered off of the highways and onto the surface streets of San Francisco. "We have reservations," he'd said. It sounded like a date.

Rogue admired the pretty, elaborate, pastel rowhouses lining the broad, open boulevard. The car turned into a somewhat more residential neighborhood and pulled up to the curb in front of a large rambling Victorian on a corner lot. Magneto paid the driver and supervised the transfer of their luggage from the cab's trunk to the hotel porter.

He checked them in under a false name, Rogue trailing along behind him, then led the way from a baroque front parlor up a wide staircase to a hallway lined with rooms. Rogue glanced up and whistled at the open gallery up to the top floor and the exquisite stained glass window at the top.

"It used to be a school for wayward girls," he told her with a very pointed look before he paused in front of a door, which swung open without his use of the key that he'd pocketed upon checking in. Rogue glanced up the hallway in alarm, but no one was around.

His suitcase and her backpack both lifted themselves from the hallway and floated into the room. Rogue shook her head and followed him inside, looking immediately for the answer to one of her most looming anxieties about this whole insane venture.

One bed. She licked her lips, which felt dry, and glanced at him. He was watching her in amusement.

"We can't sleep together," she made herself say, then blushed horridly. "I mean, like, in a bed."  Christ, trying to make that distinction only made it worse. "That's too dangerous."

"No one said we were," he replied, leaning against the wall as the curtains spread themselves and let in the sun, and his suitcase unzipped itself on the bed.

Rogue spun in place, unnerved by all the activity in the room that seemed to be happening on its own. She watched as the closet opened and his garment bag hung itself inside, and his neatly folded clothes floated into drawers that opened and closed themselves. The closet and the bureau had obvious metal fixtures that allowed him to manipulate them, but she didn't know how he managed to move his sweaters and socks using his power, unless all his clothes had metal embedded in them.

A laptop set itself on the desk, and a small bag that she assumed was full of toiletries floated from his suitcase into the bathroom. Finally his suitcase zipped itself and tucked itself away on a shelf in the closet, which closed. Her own backpack still sat forlornly on the bed.

Magneto laughed at Rogue's slightly overwhelmed look. "Did you bring tights to wear under the skirts that I saw you pack?"

"Uh. Yeah."

"Good, put them on, with a skirt."

Rogue suddenly balked. "Why?" she asked in a defiant tone.

He closed his eyes briefly in annoyance, then opened them and made a small gesture with his hand. She felt a violent jerk backward on her jeans and suddenly found herself sprawled on the bed with him standing over her, arms crossed, frowning.

He had his gloves in his hand and Rogue's breath caught in her throat. "This morning you were terrified to remember how many people I've killed and, indeed, how close I've come to killing YOU, and now you are taking this attitude over a simple request to change your clothes?" His expression was grim.

 _This was foolish why did I think this was a good idea can't I just go home?_ Rogue thought in alarm. He moved forward, putting one knee on the bed, and leaned down to grab a fistful of her hair. He used the grip to tilt her face toward him as he gazed down at her. One of her hands was on his arm and the other pushing at his chest.

"Touch me, girl. My face," he told her forcefully.

She tried to shake her head but could not. "I don't want to," she whispered hoarsely.

"But you do, my dear. If you don't, I shall touch you, and I promise you that you won't like the way that I go about it." He still had a hand free, and it settled lightly on her solar plexus as he said it, over her pounding heart.

He said nothing more, merely staring hard at her. After a long moment, she swallowed and slowly moved her hand from his arm, toward his face.

He nodded at her, and she brushed her fingertips lightly over his cheek, and then his mouth.

He hissed as the pull started and she jerked her hand away. "More," he insisted, and she lay her hand against his lined cheek, her thumb on his bottom lip.

Again, the pleasure and pain of him poured into her, just a little. Both gasped.

She pulled away again, feeling the aching throb between her legs. Her eyes were bright on his, and he smiled slowly as he caught his breath. "Now, Rogue, tell me something."

"Yeah?" she breathed heavily.

"Are you wet?"

She closed her eyes in embarrassment and said nothing.

"Of course you are. And what's more, you're going to be again, by the end of the day. You realize this, don't you? I'm not under any illusion that you allowed me to bring you here with so little fuss because of your devotion to my ideology."

Magneto's hand tightened in her hair and she squeezed her eyes shut even tighter, but could not argue with his words. His other hand found her breast and closed in a bruising grip and she jerked.

He rubbed a thumb over her nipple. "Are you going to do as I've directed now, you foolish girl?"

She still didn't look at him. "I guess that depends," she said shakily. "Are you going to actually fuck me at some point before you take me back to New York?"

His hand stilled. After a few seconds of silence, she slitted her eyes and peeked up at him. He was gazing at her with a strange expression on his face, and once again she was struck by how intensely blue and piercing his eyes were.

She opened her eyes the rest of the way, then wetted her lips in nervousness, regretting her words.

Finally he responded, speaking slowly. "Yes, my dear, I do believe that I am."

She swallowed. "Then I guess I'll put on the tights." For some reason, her tone didn't sound smart-assed at all.

Magneto released her and backed away from the bed, looking thoughtful. Rogue got up slowly and pulled off her jeans, avoiding his gaze, then fished a pair of tights and one of her long skirts from her backpack and pulled them on.

Finally she slipped back into her shoes, low-heeled mary janes that she'd worn precisely because they worked with either jeans or skirts, and Magneto simply raised an eyebrow at her as he offered her his arm and led her from the room.

* * *

He was quiet as he called another cab and provided the driver with an address. Rogue played their earlier encounters from the day over in her head, once in a while looking at his still profile out of the corner of her eye.

The taxi dropped them off in front of one of the rowhouses that she'd been admiring earlier. Rogue noticed that this one was less pristine than the prettiest of them and the paint was peeling in places, but the facade was cared for and the little plot of greenery out front was kempt. Magneto led her up the stairs and rang the bell.

This wasn't really what she'd imagined by "shopping." Was he running one of his mysterious errands first?

The girl who opened the door couldn't have been more than a few years older than Rogue. She was dressed in piecemeal vintage clothing that she'd assembled into a trendy urban reinterpretation of Victorian fashion. Her pale face was strikingly pretty but her dyed black hair was something of a rat's nest, held back from her face with a couple of silver hairsticks.

"Mr. Kessler, so nice to meet you, please come right in," she said immediately, moving aside and gesturing Magneto and Rogue to come into her foyer. "And you must be Rogue." She flashed each of them a warm smile as she shook their hands and started to lead them up the stairs. She didn't react at all to Rogue wearing gloves.

"Miss Lintner, it's a pleasure. You come very highly recommended," Magneto said charmingly.

"Please, call me Catherine." She led them up the stairs and into her front room. Everywhere Rogue looked, there were seamstress's mannequins tucked into corners, each of them with a corset laced onto it, some of them with elaborate or elegant dresses underneath. Corsets hung on pretty fabric hangers all around the perimeter of the lushly-appointed living room, and were snugged onto velvet pillows that lined the stairs they had come up. The couch and coffee table were arranged to one side of the living room, giving plenty of floor space in front of an oversized full-length mirror. Rogue trailed behind Catherine and Magneto silently.

"I understand that you've commissioned a great deal of work from Greta Mueller in New York. She's made me aware of some of your unique requirements, and I think that I'm going to be able to satisfy you quite well."

"Excellent," Magneto responded, taking a seat in the armchair in response to Catherine's gestured invitation. "And there won't be any problem finishing before Friday evening?"

Catherine had pulled Rogue in front of the mirror, and took both her gloved hands and raised them outward between them to chest level so that she could eye Rogue's figure critically. Rogue felt nervous with this complete stranger touching her, but her skin was pretty well covered. "Well, a rush of that magnitude is quite expensive, but if you're willing to pay the fee, then yes, I can do it."

So this was how Magneto did his shopping? Rogue remembered her crack about probably not being able to buy corsets anymore in this day and age. He hadn't even bothered to correct her.

Catherine picked up a measuring tape and proceeded to efficiently take Rogue's measurements. Rogue didn't quite know what to make of it all, and so mostly stayed silent, raised her arms when she was told, and answered questions about her shoe and glove sizes and about her preferences in colors and fabrics. Every time she caught Magneto's eye he just smirked at her, and Catherine was all bustling focus.

When she was done, Catherine turned to Magneto and started to speak.

"Pardon me, Miss Lintner, I'm going to send Rogue on an errand while I finalize my order," he said smoothly, which made Rogue blink. Catherine evidently thought little of it, for she responded with a simple "of course" as if it were the most natural thing in the world to order expensive garments for people without them present. Indeed, with them specifically excluded.

Magneto stood and pulled out a bill to press into Rogue's hand. "Go next door and get us both lattes, my dear," he told her smoothly, guiding her to the top of the stairs. "Then wait there."

For once, Rogue obeyed without arguing. Her head was spinning slightly and she felt out of her element, so it was a bit of a relief to get outside and go about the familiar business of procuring coffee.

Magneto joined her after about twenty minutes, then hailed a cab to return to the hotel where they were staying. It was late evening by then, and he took her to a small Indian restaurant around the corner. She tried to ask him about Friday night's dinner, but he waved her off.

He spent the meal asking her about her plans for studying art. Rogue found herself warming up to the topic, and he turned out to be an excellent conversationalist when he wasn't trying to fuck with her head. Well, not trying in any way that she could notice, anyway. She had her doubts about whether he bothered to participate in any conversation that didn't have the goal of fucking with somebody's head.

After that, they returned to the hotel, and Rogue found herself dragging her feet as they approached the door to their room. There were butterflies in her stomach.

Magneto wrapped a hand around her upper arm and pulled her along. "You're going to learn to trust me, Rogue," he murmured in her ear.

"You told me before that I was right to be afraid of you," she responded as he opened the door and escorted her into the room.

"Yes, that's right. You should be afraid of me, and you should trust me."

Rogue opened her mouth, and Magneto pushed her into the middle of the room and raised a hand. "Don't," he said irritably, and she closed her mouth in surprise and looked at him.

He fixed her with a steely gaze. "I will tolerate no more of your attitude and no more of your rebellion this evening, Rogue. You are going to do what I tell you to do, or I AM going to discipline you, which will be both unpleasant and painful. You can threaten to walk out on me for it tomorrow, as I feel quite certain that you have nowhere to go tonight. Now take off your clothes. All of them."

There was nothing for it, no matter how angry or scared or nervous she felt. Rogue slowly stepped out of her shoes, then removed her shirt, her skirt, her tights and her bra and panties and gloves, until she stood before him entirely bare, all of her deadly skin on display. Oddly enough, even when the supposed cure had been effectively suppressing her mutation, she had never stood fully nude in front of a man, and she found herself shaking now as she did it for the first time, and that man was Magneto.

"You are lovely," he told her in an appreciative voice, studying her openly in a way that made heat coil low in her stomach.

"Thank you," she whispered, eyes fixed on the wall beside his shoulder.

He walked to the closet and gestured it open. His back was to her and she could hear his suitcase unzip but couldn't see what he was taking out of it.

"These are for you," he said, and Rogue felt the sweat come up on her palms. He turned, one hand raised, and a metal box floated onto the desk beside Rogue and opened itself.

She peered into it. The box itself was lined with dark red velvet, and inside nestled four pairs of silver cuffs of varying sizes. Each cuff was about two inches wide and had a lovely matte finish that almost made them look like jewelry, except that there was no visible seam. The inside of each was lined with a soft-looking black fabric.

He was watching her reaction closely. She turned to him with a fearful expression.

"If I put these on, I would be entirely at your mercy. You could control me completely."

"That's correct, my dear." Magneto pulled off his coat and hung it in the closet behind him, retrieving his gloves from the pocket as he did so. He turned back to watch her as he tugged them on, and her gaze was again drawn to his hands as he did so, her lips slightly parted.

"After the day that I seduced you in your apartment, you knew perfectly well why I was bringing you to San Francisco with me," he said, taking the two steps forward that put him within arm's distance of her. She was standing completely still. "You knew what I wanted from you, and I was equally clear on what you wanted from me even before you did me the favor of asking for it outright earlier today." Magneto reached out and ran his gloved fingers down her throat and across her breast, then flicked her nipple lightly.

"I will make you come at my hands again, Rogue. I will inflict both pleasures and pains on you, and when I am ready, I will indeed _fuck_ you as you so nicely asked me to do. But you are dangerous, my dear -- hadn't you stopped to wonder why a man like me would be attracted to a girl like you? It's because you are a genuine danger, even to me -- and so I will do none of those things until you are completely at my mercy."

He put his first two fingers over her mouth, and the feel of expensive leather was exquisite. She couldn't help but part her wet lips slightly, and he pressed inward, his fingers sliding past her teeth and over her soft tongue. She moaned around them and he took another half step forward so that his body was almost, but not quite, pressed against hers.

"And besides all that," he added in quiet voice, tilting his head as he stared at her, "there is the little fact that you WANT to be completely at my mercy."

She whimpered then, glassy eyes fixed on his, and he raised his other hand and gestured the cuffs out of the box. Rogue made no move to evade what came next.

The smallest pair of cuffs unlinked themselves and closed around her wrists, the next pair around her ankles. The two larger pairs closed snugly around her upper arms and her mid thighs. The fabric lining them was silky against her skin.

He could essentially treat her as a marionette if he wanted. She was so wet that she could feel the slickness on her inner thighs. He smiled slowly.

"And now, my dear girl, it is time for us to get some sleep."

Rogue stared at him in dismay. Surely he was joking? Her body was thrumming with desire.

He lifted his hand again and gestured, and she felt her legs come out from under her as she was lifted onto the bed. The sensation was unsettling and she briefly tried to struggle against it, but with four sets of cuffs he had excellent control of her motion.

"Erik," she said in a low, despondent voice, and he chuckled.

"Frustrated, Rogue?" he asked her cruelly.

He settled her on the far side of the bed, holding her a couple of inches above the mattress while he pulled all of the blankets except the top sheet from beneath her. The sheet he pulled free from his side of the bed and folded his side of it over top of her, creating a barrier between her and his side of the bed. Then he tugged the blanket and comforter back into place over top of her.

Then he turned off the light and went into the bathroom.

Rogue lay in the dark, every muscle tense, listening to him ready himself for bed. It seemed like an eternity before she heard the door open, and he was standing beside the bed, silhouette barely visible in the dark room. She couldn't even tell what state of dress or undress he was in as he lay down beside her.

"This sheet isn't enough protection," she said in a low voice. "I could push it off and roll over and touch you in my sleep."

"No you can't," he responded, turning on his side away from her. "I told you to trust me."

"Erik--"

"Go to sleep, Rogue."

Annoyed, Rogue rolled over and raised a hand toward the back of his neck to make her point. He chuckled when she came up short, unable to move her hand closer to him than a certain point due to resistance from the cuff she wore.

She sniffed and pulled her arm back to her side. "You can't be absolutely certain to maintain that in your sleep," she pointed out.

"Rogue, if you don't go to sleep I'll gag you."

"And you might roll over and put a hand on me. On my stomach or something. There's no metal there for you to sense."

"Sleep, Rogue. Now." His voice was no longer amused.

Rogue rolled back over and spent a long time staring at the wall before she drifted into a fitful slumber.

 


	8. Chapter 8

Rogue finally fell asleep a few hours before dawn, then woke again in the weak early light of morning.

She lay on her back, staring at the ceiling for several long moments and reflecting on the fact that she was laying beside Erik Lensherr. She could hear his soft, even breathing, and though there was a foot of space and a cotton sheet between them, she could feel the heat of him in the bed.

Eventually she worked up the nerve to look over at him.

He had turned toward her in the night, though he hadn't reached for her as she'd feared. He'd pushed the blankets down to his waist, and he wore blue striped cotton pajamas. His silver hair was mussed and the lines of his aged face were relaxed slightly in his sleep. His lips were even parted slightly, though she noticed with annoyance that the arrogant man seemed not to drool in his sleep.

He was a distinguished looking man, and Rogue wondered just how old he was. He'd survived the concentration camps, so he had to be, what, well over sixty? His left arm lay on the pillow near his head and the sleeve was rucked up two or three inches, but not far enough for her to see the number inked into his flesh there. For some reason, she suddenly wanted to see it.

She reached out carefully to see if she could push the sleeve further. Her hand came up short well away from him, and his eyes opened as if in response to her push on the barrier between them.

"What were you doing, Rogue?" he murmured sleepily.

She pulled her hand back. "I wanted to see your tattoo," she whispered reluctantly.

His eyes moved from her face to the streak in her hair. "You rumple well," he said, then closed his eyes again and rolled over.

When she woke again, he was gone. She was relieved that she'd finally seemed to get several straight hours of real sleep.

Five hundred dollar bills lay with a room key on top of a tourist's guide on the desk. A few pages in the guide had folded corners, including a hands-on science museum called the Exploratorium and a ferry company that ran tours of the restored Alcatraz Island and a redwood preserve north of the city. There were also two articles printed from the internet, one describing a labyrinth laid out on a cliff on the western coast of the city, and the other describing a strange grotto/musical sculpture built out of recycled cemetary masonry on a bluff to the north.

Rogue finally unpacked her backpack and frowned at the cuffs that still adorned her. With a little experimenting, she found that she could tug the cuffs around her upper arms and around her thighs down the length of her limbs and over her hands or feet, but there was no way that she could remove the cuffs on her wrists or ankles. Given that she could not free herself from his control, she thought maybe it was better not to irritate him by interfering with it in the small ways that she could, and she slipped the larger cuffs back into place and tugged on her jeans and a fresh top over the bonds.

Rogue had never just set out to explore a strange city entirely on her own, and found herself thrilled with the progress of the day. She ate a lunch of green curry in a tiny Thai restaurant near the ocean, and when her energy began to flag mid-afternoon she spent an hour sipping coffee and perusing books in a store downtown.

She bought two books on art history and a very pretty dress that she fell in love with and thought that he might like with some of the money that he'd left. When she finally got back to the hotel room it was after seven, but there was no sign that he'd returned. She took a shower -- removing the two sets of cuffs that she could, and just shrugging at the fact that the others were going to have to go with her into the water. They seemed none the worse for wear, so she replaced the the other cuffs and changed into the dress, then sat down to browse her books and plan the next day's activities until he returned.

The door swung open close to nine o'clock and he swept in. He was wearing a sweater and his high boots and looked rather military again. His eyes found her promptly, and he actually paused as he looked her over.

The dress was long and black and made of a highly sheer lace, and though it had come with a sleeveless satin shell to be worn underneath, at the moment she was only wearing the lace layer. Her nipples and the dark shadow of her pubic hair were visible, as well as the glint of the metal cuffs that he'd put on her.

"Right," he said in amusement. "We'll order in."

Rogue found herself gratified by his reaction, then squeaked as she found herself lifted in the air and thrown face-down onto the bed. Her arms were caught overhead and her legs spread, and she struggled futilely for a moment.

She could turn her head enough to see some of his movement. He levitated his laptop out of his satchel and sat at the desk and tapped away for a few minutes, and she pondered what to say. She was finding it kind of panic-inducing to be restrained like this, and yet she'd spent the day well aware that this was probably coming.

"What kind of chow mein?" he asked her suddenly.

"Um." She chewed her lip. "Vegetable."

She could see the back of his head, and he nodded. Erik went into the bathroom and showered, leaving her there. She tugged periodically against his restraint, but it seemed that he had no more problems maintaining control of her cuffs from another room than he did maintaining control of them while he slept.

_Are you surprised, Rogue? Today you saw the repairs that are still in progress on the bridge that he once ripped from its pylons._

A strange thrill ran though her at the thought. He had KILLED people when he'd done that. She shouldn't be laying here feeling turned on by it.

He emerged wrapped in one of the hotel's white terrycloth bathrobes, and for some reason it was even more surreal than seeing Magneto sleeping in his blue pajamas.

_He probably flosses and belches too, you know. He may be aloof and he may be powerful, but he's still a man._

She should know that, by now. He'd certainly demonstrated to her straightforwardly enough that he had the appetites of a man. But somehow, she simply still could not imagine him belching.

"I hope you scrubbed behind your ears," she told him, giggling, and he gave her a strange look before sitting down at the desk again.

"Erik... how long are you going to leave me here?" She tugged on her arms again.

"Until I'm ready to do something else with you," he responded curtly, and Rogue subsided, realizing that he did not sound patient at the moment.

Only a few moments later there was a knock on the door, and Erik got up to answer it.

He was _not_ going to leave her bound spread-eagle on the bed and open the door for food delivery, was he?

"Here you go, sir."

"Thank you very much." Evidently so.

Rogue lay silent and still. There was a bit of a corner from the bathroom and Magneto was standing in the doorway himself, so Rogue had no idea if the delivery person could have looked past the man paying him to see the woman bound on the bed or not.

The door closed, and Rogue felt herself lifted again and flipped. Erik propped up some pillows then settled her again, though this time she was sitting up, her legs arranged in front of her, her arms behind her back.

She stared at him, pale. "I can't believe you did that."

He scoffed and sat cross-legged on the bed beside her and opened a carton of chow mein. Rogue waited for him to release her, but instead he fished a fork from the bag, twirled some noodles on it, and held it up to her mouth.

"Erik--" she started to say.

"Open your mouth," he told her firmly, and reluctantly she did.

He said nothing to her as he hand fed her her dinner, and Rogue found herself studying him between bites and wondering at his motivations. The man was clearly a complete control freak, and he always held himself distant from her in some way. Even though he sometimes seemed entertained by her, or irritated, she still somehow felt like his moods and whims were fundamentally beyond her influence. Perhaps the thing that he controlled most rigidly, she reflected, opening her mouth obediently for another bite, was himself.

And herself? Why was Rogue here, allowing him to basically do whatever he wished with her with only a few token protestations? He'd essentially accused her once of both submissiveness and masochism, and she had brushed both descriptors away in favor of the much vaguer observation that he simply turned her on a lot. But she couldn't escape that the _way_ that he turned her on was by dominating, humiliating, and hurting her.

"What are you thinking about, Rogue?" he asked her then, putting down the chow mein and opening another carton that he began to eat from himself.

"This," she said simply, her eyes flickering from him down to her restrained form and back.

"Hmm." A moment passed while he ate. "And what do you think of... 'this'?"

Rogue pulled against her bonds, and this time it wasn't out of any desire to escape them, but merely to experience what it felt like to be unable to. "I've never thought of myself as submissive," she said, blushing only lightly this time.

Magneto chuckled and pulled her arms more closely together behind her back for a moment, eliciting discomfort, and she made a small sound of protest. "Oh? Did you imagine that the Wolverine would be an egalitarian type of lover?"

She blinked at that. "What do you mean?"

Erik chewed thoroughly before he swallowed each mouthful, and never spoke before he was finished with the process. "I mean, dear girl, what did you imagine _him_ doing to you if you'd actually managed to attract his interest? Surely you weren't imagining the two of you _making love_ side-by-side, with him caressing you gently and kissing your hair?" Scorn dripped from his voice when he said "making love."

Rogue looked taken aback. "I suppose I imagined him just, y'know, taking me. Maybe kinda roughly." She wasn't really sitting here discussing her girlish fantasies of Wolverine with Magneto, was she?

"Dominating you," he supplied, and she looked down.

"I didn't think of it like that."

He chuckled again and took another bite. "Wolverine is probably the only man you've met who might be as domineering as I am, Rogue. Why do you think he managed to catch Mystique's eye? She's a discerning woman. It's not coincidence that both you and Mystique have each found yourselves drawn to the Wolverine and to me."

Rogue hadn't particularly known that Mystique had some kind of interest in Logan, but anyway, it was something else about what he was saying that surprised her. "Are you saying that, uh, Mystique is, y'know..." He raised an eyebrow mockingly as she faltered. "She's submissive, uh, in bed?"

"Heavens, no," he replied in an amused voice. "I said that she was drawn to domineering men. Mystique, however, likes to give as good as she gets, as the saying goes."

Rogue scrunched her nose as she thought about that. "You mean she fights back?"

"Something like that." He finished his dinner and began to tuck the detritus all back into the bag.

"Is that... sexier?" she made herself ask, and he glanced at her. "When a girl fights back? You seem annoyed when I do it, but you don't sound annoyed about Mystique being that way."

"They're entirely different games, my dear,” he said off-handedly as he disappeared into the bathroom again. "And you're going to learn to stop doing that."

When he came back out, he'd discarded the robe and put on his pants and sweater again, then sat down by the desk and pulled his boots back on.

"Are you going back out?" she asked in confusion.

"No." His voice was clipped and she felt her heartrate increase as if in response.

When he looked up at her, his eyes were entirely cold, and Rogue instinctively began to struggle against her bonds again.

He came at her ungloved, up onto the bed and straddling her in an instant, his hand tangling in her hair.

The heat came immediately and she moaned as he tugged at her head. It wasn't fair. It was like pulling her hair was some kind of built-in trigger that automatically turned her into putty in his hands. And he knew it.

He thrust two fingers of his other hand between her lips and slid them the whole way into the back of her throat, making her gag. His fingers were bare and she was almost as stunned by the actual salty taste of his skin as she was by the violence of his actions. She coughed and twisted her head as the pull started, but he continued to press down into the back of her throat for another second before he jerked both hands away from her, panting.

"Do I have your attention?" he asked sharply as she coughed a couple of more times.

"Yeah," she managed to choke out, straining hard against the metal cuffs that held her.

She was astonished when he slapped her. It happened before she even realized what he was doing, but her cheek smarted sharply. She wanted to reach up and cover her face, but could not. Her watering eyes flew to him and he was staring down at her intently, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.

"'Yes, _sir_ ,'" he corrected her firmly.

"Wha--what?" she stuttered.

"I have decided that it is time to begin instilling some respect into you," he explained to her, as if she were a small child. "You have had plenty of warning about what you're getting into with me, and yet you came here with me, and I find you in my room tonight dressed to provoke me. So it's time to see if you can handle that which you think you want. From now on, when I have your attention like this, I want your answer to my questions to be 'yes, sir,' not 'yeah'."

She tried to re-wet her dry lips, still pulling absently against her bonds. He raised a hand toward her face and she flinched, but he merely touched a fingertip to her cheekbone briefly.

"What would you like to say to that, my dear?" he asked warningly, his hand still near her face.

Her throat was almost too tight to get the words out. "Yes... _sir_ ," she ground out, and his smile was pleased.

"Good..."

He began to explore her body then, in much more thoroughness than any of their previous encounters. His hands were bare above the lace, which was sheer enough that Rogue hadn't known if it would prevent her power from working or not, but evidently it did. The material itself was scratchy, but she could feel the warmth of his hands right through it as he caressed her arms, her breasts, her tummy and thighs.

He leaned down and laved her nipple with his tongue, moistening the fabric thoroughly, and Rogue moaned loudly, arching up hard against her bonds. His teeth closed over the taut peak and he sucked hard at her flesh. "Oh god," she moaned, tossing her head, the only part of her that she could move with any freedom.

He turned his attention to her other breast and his hand slid down her body, gathering the fabric at the juncture of her thighs and pressing in between her legs, grasping at her painfully. He only had to rub at her for a moment for the lace there to become thoroughly damp, which caused Rogue to flush even more deeply.

"Your body doesn't lie," he murmured tauntingly. He raised his hand from between her thighs and quickly wiped his fingers across her lips, and they had become moist enough that she tasted some of her own juices on them. "Your body wants you to obey me. Doesn't it, Rogue?"

She was caught up in his gaze again, feeling her body thrum in response to his touch, his voice. "Ye--Yess.." She took a deep breath. "Yes, sir."

"So you do learn. Perhaps you deserve a reward." His hand pressed in between her thighs again, probing at her through the thin fabric. The lace felt abrasive against her most delicate tissues but she didn't care, because the flesh of his hand was hot and it was his and he could move the world with it and it was pushing at her as if he were finally going to fill her...

"Yesterday you wanted me inside you," he reminded her, eyes gleaming.

"Oh god yes," she breathed, pushed up toward his hand as much as she could with the cuffs restricting her.

"Greedy girl," he said condescendingly, and his fingers tangled in the lace and began to tug her hem upward, toward her waist. He shifted one of his legs to rest between hers, and she could almost feel the press of his thigh against her body.

She wanted to rock against his thigh. She wanted his leather-clad fingers pushing inside of her. More than anything, she wanted him to press his body against hers and fuck her with the same ruthlessness that he did everything else, but even in her present state she suspected that he would continue to deny her that.

He gestured subtly and her body bowed backward on the bed, her arms pulled together painfully behind her back, her thighs spreading further. He sat back briefly, finally pulling his gloves from his back pocket and preparing to touch her, which made her exhale sharply in relief and wild anticipation. Then he leaned forward over her and braced himself on one hand, the other sliding between her legs and finding her clit.

"Do you still want me inside of you?" he asked wickedly, pinching the little bundle of nerves so hard she shrieked.

"Please," she begged, then licked her lips and added, "please, SIR. Inside of me. Your fingers."

"Oh, no, my dear, I can do better than that," he murmured and her eyes flew open. She'd been sure he wasn't going to actually fuck her--

She felt a cold, smooth pressure between her legs and her head snapped up. His right hand was still rubbing at her clit, his left on the bed beside her. He smirked at her, his eyes still cold, as he slid his leather-clad fingers down and spread her labia, opening her to his intrusion.

"What--" she gasped.

"Metal, of course," he interrupted. "It's metal, Rogue. More intimate to me in many ways than my own flesh." His voice was hoarse.

_Metal._

Rogue pressed upward toward the pressure, and she felt its cool length began to slide inside of her impossibly hot passage. The object was considerably thicker than a gloved finger, and she moaned loudly, eyelids flickering, as it filled her slowly.

She was slick and aroused and the metal was cold and unyielding inside her. Unyielding, like the man who controlled it. He began to rub rhythmically at her clitoris, and the metal violating her body obeyed the motion of his fingers, pressing upward and inward. His eyes were fixed on hers, and though his lower body was not in contact with her at all, his expression looked for all the world like the expression of a man buried to the hilt inside a woman's body.

"Oh god you're actually inside of me," she choked out, hips pressing upward in response to the object that filled her, and his eyes showed his approval. He lowered his head to her breast again and sucked hard at her nipple, and the combined stimulation pushed her toward orgasm faster than she'd ever experienced in her life.

He lifted his head again. "Don't even _think_ of coming without permission," he snarled, and the demanding edge to his voice only drove her further.

"Oh god I'm almost there already, oh god please Erik, oh god please tell me to come..."

He moved his bracing hand from the bed to wrap around her neck, somehow managing to hold back enough of his weight that he didn't just crush her throat, but his thumb dug cruelly into her pulse beneath her ear. "Please _what_ , Rogue?" he asked menacingly.

"Oh god please _sir_ may I come now oh god please now?" The metal inside of her felt like it was pounding with bruising force at her cervix, and for some reason the pain only made the building tension inside her all the more insistent...

He lowered his face until down by her own, until his mouth was near the ear that his thumb rested beneath.

"Come _now_ ," he commanded, fingers pressing hard on her clit, the object inside her impaling her relentlessly, the hand on her throat cutting off her air... and as she spilled over the edge, he buried his teeth in the side of her neck and did not release her as her power began to pull at him...

There was nothing in the world to describe what happened to her next.

She flailed against her bonds so hard that they bit bruisingly into her arms and legs. Rogue had no way to pull free of the contact between his skin and hers, and the tidal wave of his lust and consuming will poured into her as her body climaxed with a stunning intensity that made her vision go dim. The pleasure and pain of drawing him into her blended explosively into the pleasure and pain of the sensations he was inflicting, and her mind spiraled outward and upward until it flew apart into countless fragments, her body shuddering violently between his two gloved hands.

Time had no meaning, and so it might have lasted for a second or an hour, she did not know.

Her vision actually went black for a few seconds, and though the sounds around her seemed muffled she felt the pain of his bite abate at the same moment that he collapsed beside her and she fell fully onto the bed herself, no longer restrained by her cuffs. Even without her senses working properly, even as she shook with the slowly receding tide of her orgasm, she knew that she had to get away from him, and she rolled blindly in the other direction from his weight on the bed.

Rogue panted heavily, making tiny sounds of shock as her body continued to spasm, her now-free hands pressing down between her legs as if to protect herself from any further stimulation. Whatever he'd been using to penetrate her was gone, and she had the strange idea that she'd flung it away from them using his power at the moment that the balance shifted between them and she'd absorbed more of his gift than he retained.

Magneto was silent behind her, and she tried to pull her head together as fast as possible, rolling carefully back over to see if he was okay.

He lay on his side on the bed, and as she managed to turn to him his eyelids fluttered.

"Jesus, Erik," she said weakly, reaching out and putting a hand on his chest.

His own hand came up and wrapped around her wrist, and his eyes fully opened.

"Please tell me you're okay," she pleaded.

The corner of his mouth quirked. "I'm not dead," he croaked, then cleared his throat.

"Jesus!" she exclaimed, and wanted to hit him in the chest, but his grip firmed around her wrist and prevented it. "What were you THINKING?"

He looked vaguely bemused. "I was thinking that I wanted to bite you," he replied, still blinking.

"My _skin_ is _deadly_ ," she nearly shouted, and he released her wrist and pressed his gloved hand over her mouth instead.

"I'm aware of that, Rogue," he said, his voice regaining its characteristic firmness. "Calm down now, or I'll calm you down."

Rogue could feel both his power and his will vibrating inside of her, and found that she was incensed instead of cowed by his threatening tone. The cuffs that he'd put on her unclasped themselves and flung themselves away from her body, and she reached out with his awareness and found the metal in the harness that he wore beneath his sweater in order to lift himself. She used it to shake him hard.

Magneto pushed himself away from her and off of the bed and rose swiftly to his feet, and Rogue pushed herself upright to her knees on the mattress and glared at him. Her head was still swimming from the shattering orgasm, but she was filled with his righteousness and power and she reached out with his ability and began to pull him toward her. She didn't know what she intended to do with him, but she was overwhelmed with all of the emotions that he brought out in her and the sudden capacity to manipulate him the way that he had been manipulating her.

Magneto backhanded her hard across the face. "Stop it," he barked angrily.

Rogue's hands flew to her cheek and she stared at him in shock. She'd fumbled her grip on him when the pain in her head blossomed, and she blinked hard against tears as she tasted blood from a split lip. The intense surge of his gift was flowing out of her fast, and though she could still feel the hum of the metal in the room around her, she was becoming aware that he had probably already regained the balance of power.

They locked gazes, his blazing with fury, hers confused and stunned. He seemed to nearly tremble with the effort of controlling himself. Her tongue darted out to probe at the swollen cut on her lip.

"Sit _down_ ," he said, his voice tight and dangerous. Rogue obeyed him, sitting on the edge of the bed, feeling strangely distant from what was happening. Some part of her realized that she was in a very risky situation, but the rest was still just astonished that she'd just been hit in the face.

He stepped forward and put his gloved hands on her shoulders. His fingers bit into her flesh, and in a weird way this new pain seemed to clear her head slightly from the jarring impact of what he'd just done to her.

"I was reckless," he said in a low voice, "but turning my power against me was a remarkably bad idea, my dear."

Rogue swallowed and looked up at him. His gaze was completely detached and cold, and she knew that she was in this room with the terrorist who'd killed so many with so little thought at Alcatraz Island.

"I'm sorry," she found herself saying in a small voice. She was shaking beneath his touch.

"I don't _care_ ," he replied angrily, and she winced.

He stared down at her, taking several deep breaths. He closed his eyes for a moment as his thumbs dug hard into the hollows above her collarbones. She could not avoid making a noise of pain.

Suddenly he nodded curtly and took a step back.

"Get the dress off," he instructed, and she did as she was told, unable to meet his gaze.

Her cuffs rose from where she'd flung them and floated toward her. Hoping that he might take it as a peace offering, Rogue lifted her arms and held them out for her bonds, which fixed themselves back into place.

Her wrist cuffs pulled her off the bed and to the floor at the foot of it. Magneto's steely gaze did not waver as she found herself restrained nude against the far leg of the bed, in the corner farthest from the door.

Without another word, he snapped off the lights and stalked out of the room, the door slamming itself behind him.

 


	9. Chapter 9

Rogue had no way of telling time, so she wasn't sure how long it was before she heard him come back.

She'd pulled the comforter off of the bed and wrapped herself up in it. In her movements she'd discovered the metal object that he'd used to penetrate her earlier, and for some reason she wiped it off carefully with a corner of the blanket and grasped it as she curled up, as if its cool, smooth weight was a reminder of the man who'd left her there. She couldn't see it in the dimness, but she could discern from handling it that it was a stainless steel bar about eight inches long, with a large knob on one end and four smaller knobs along its length.

Where did he get such things anyway?

Rogue's emotions were mixed. She was angry at him for his recklessness, and for essentially forcing both his power and his arrogance upon her and then punishing her for it when they manifested.

But a much larger part of her was fearful that he was going to send her home.

Rogue could no longer deny that she was drawn to him strongly, that she was in the grip of both powerful desire and a near-obsessive fascination. And that she wanted him to want her as badly.

They'd both been in that cafe because he liked that cafe and he was in her head, but for whatever reason he'd chosen to come back a second day, and a third. And then after walking away from her on a New York street, he'd found out where she lived and come there and seduced her.

Then he'd brought her to San Francisco. So far he'd taken her for a private consultation so that he could dress her the way he wanted, as if she were a doll. He'd brought cuffs that were clearly intended exactly for the purposes that they'd been put to, and she couldn't imagine that the metal barbell that she was currently grasping was meant for anything other that what it'd been employed for earlier.

Clearly he was here on some kind of business, but just as clearly business hadn't been the only thing on his mind.

The door opened and closed and she heard the soft thud of his boots on the carpeted floor. He came around the foot of the bed and stood over her, gazing down at her in the darkness. Her stomach felt like it was made of lead, and sweat had sprung up on her palms.

"If you _ever_ use my power against me again, I will make you wish that I'd killed you on the Statue of Liberty." His voice was composed now, but there was no feeling in it.

Rogue shifted slightly and tried to avoid envisioning how he might go about that. "Yes, sir," she responded meekly. She didn't know if he'd intended for her to address him as such outside of, uh, sexual contexts, but at the moment she figured that a show of respect couldn't go awry.

He was still for another moment, then raised a hand and she found herself freed from the foot of the bed. She sighed in relief -- the position in which he'd left her hadn't been pointedly uncomfortable, but she'd been there long enough to stiffen up.

"It was the first time that I let you have enough of me inside of you to affect you like that," he said slowly, "and I didn't prepare you for it. I realize that it was not your intent to rebel in such an unacceptable way."

She said nothing, just rubbed her wrist absently. Finally he turned and pulled his sweater over his head.

"Get in the bed," he told her brusquely, and Rogue obeyed.

The next morning she woke as he moved about, readying himself to go out. She gazed up at him blearily from the bed as he strapped on his harness -- it looked something like the bulletproof vests she'd seen cops wear on TV, though less bulky -- and then buttoned a high-collared shirt over top of it.

"So you can't literally fly, you just lift yourself using that?" she asked in a sleepy voice.

Magneto paused and then moved to the edge of the bed, gazing down at her as he finished with his buttons. "There's usually enough metal in the environment I can lift myself by pushing against it," he explained. "But I prefer not to have to count on that."

She reached over the edge of the bed and ran a finger along the buckle of his high boot. "Sexy," she murmured, pulling the covers up to her chin.

He made a sound of amusement, and she looked up to his face again. The lines of it were slightly softer than usual in the dim morning light, and he paused in buttoning one of his cuffs as he gazed at her. His eyes were fixed on her mouth, and Rogue probed at her swollen lip again lightly with her tongue. It didn't throb too badly this morning, but it still tasted coppery.

"We will _both_ be careful to ensure that we do not have a repeat of last night," he said quietly, emphasizing the word pointedly, and she nodded, understanding that this was as close to an apology as she was going to get from him.

He leaned forward slightly and wrapped her white lock around his fingers. The look on his face made her catch her breath.

"I _will_ hurt you again," he promised grimly, "and often, it will be quite on purpose. You understand that, don't you?"

Why, why did that ignite the fire between her thighs? It was a threat, not a seduction, and yet Rogue's body clearly heard it as the latter.

"I know," she whispered hoarsely, pressing her thighs together beneath the sheets.

His eyes swept over her as she moved and his lips pressed together in a knowing smirk. "Little masochist," he taunted, and she flushed in response.

"Can't help it," she said.

He released her hair and his hand settled on her breast, over the sheet, and squeezed. "I don't have time for this," he said with an edge of annoyance to his voice, and yet his fingers found her nipple and pinched it, making her squirm. His eyes returned to her mouth as he did it.

"Do you know how beautiful I find you with a split lip that I gave you?" he asked her, and Rogue's flush deepened and she was appalled to find herself needing to thrust her hand down against her sex in response to his disturbing words.

"I don't--I don't understand any of this," she gasped, finding her clit.

"It's called sex, my dear," he said wryly, moving his hand over the curve of her stomach and pressing against her hand beneath the sheet, feeling her rhythm.

Her eyes were glazing over as she began to rock against her hand, hips lifting slightly.

"Dammit," he said, and straightened, raising his hand to pull his satchel to him from the desk. Rogue whimpered as he turned away, and he glanced over his shoulder at her as he strode to the door.

"You may come this morning," he told her with a twist of his mouth, and she felt the heavy weight of the steel barbell fall against her stomach as the door swung open. "Oh, and Rogue? Be back here by five, showered and shaven," he added, and she was surprised when her cuffs fell away from her and return themselves to their box, which closed itself with a click.

* * *

Rogue enjoyed another day of exploring San Francisco, but found herself increasingly distracted by thoughts of Magneto and her attraction to him throughout the day.

He'd told her twice now that he remained perfectly willing to kill her. There was a part of her that wondered if he might be bluffing to keep the upper hand--she thought that his actions suggested that this was more than just a passing fancy to him--but then she remembered Alcatraz, and she remembered being a terrified child in steel bonds strapped by his hands into a machine meant to kill her.

She'd asked him, before that, if he'd meant to kill her. He'd turned to her and looked her squarely in the eye--she'd been a child!--and he'd drawled the word "yess" thoughtfully, without a hint of regret. She could still hear the timbre of his aristocratic tones on that one word as if he was whispering it in her ear right now. He'd explained to her why he was going to kill her then, calmly, as if she might be moved or persuaded by his words, and when he'd crouched down beside her and told her in gentle tones that he understood if his explanation would come as small consolation, she'd stared up at him in horror, adrenaline coursing through her, and been able to think about nothing other than the fact that she wasn't going to be able to bear it if he came any closer to her.

Looking back now, Rogue had an intensely uncomfortable suspicion that perhaps she'd been horrifyingly attracted to him even then. Though perhaps that was something that she was projecting backward in light of recent events.

Rogue really knew only two things: one, that she probably shouldn't be here, and two, that she was willing to do almost anything to stay anyway.

She was back at their room well before five and had showered off the dust of the day, scrubbing and shaving herself thoroughly. Tonight was the night that they "had reservations," the night that he'd wanted the garments he'd ordered from Catherine Lintner to be ready for. Rogue had butterflies in the pit of her stomach as she sat by the window and watched some children riding a bike in the street. She wondered what would be expected of her, her bare hand moving idly over the top of the metal box in her lap, then sometimes wandering to the side of her throat and exploring the tender bite mark that he'd left on her.

There was a knock on the door shortly after the hour. Rogue pulled on her gloves.

It was Catherine, her hair piled on top of her head, several boxes under her arm, a bag slung over her shoulder. Today she wore faded black jeans and a long-sleeved shirt that laced down the front.

"Hello again, Rogue," she said pleasantly, standing in the doorway.

"Oh! Um, hi. Come in."

"He didn't even tell you to expect me, did he?" Catherine said in amusement, piling the boxes on the desk and turning back to Rogue. "Well, I have two hours to put you together. You ready?"

Rogue shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, envisioning what such a process might involve. It'd been one thing to make sure her skin was thoroughly covered and let Catherine take her measurements under Magneto's watchful eye, but it was quite another to imagine how nerve-wracking it would be to let the other girl help her primp without giving away her mutation.

"Um. Look. See. There's kinda a complication." Rogue was distinctly uncomfortable, not sure what might make Magneto angry.

"He told me it was a skin condition," Catherine interrupted. "He also made it pretty clear that he'd end my career if I was cavalier about the whole thing or slipped up at all, and Rogue, I'll tell you, I'm not stupid, and I don't think that 'skin condition' quite explains the situation. _But_... he's clearly the kinda guy who expects a girl to get the message and be a little discreet, so skin condition it is. But I'll be careful. I promise."

Rogue nodded, biting her lower lip, and Catherine reached into her purse and pulled out a pair of crumpled latex surgical gloves. "I have plenty of satin ones myself, of course, but I think these'll work better for my job here today. C'mon."

Catherine had brought everything she needed to do Rogue's hair and makeup, and as she seemed to be proficient at what she was doing, Rogue simply complied with a nervous smile and hoped for the best. Catherine asked Rogue about what she'd seen of San Francisco as she worked on her hair, and she really was extremely careful, and Rogue found herself relaxing slightly.

"Of course, this _is_ San Francisco," Catherine was saying casually, "so the Board of Supervisors has done more for mutant rights here than any other city in America." Rogue stiffened and looked at Catherine suspiciously for the direction that she'd turned the conversation, but Catherine just gave her a shrewd look.

"There shouldn't even need to be a movement for mutant rights," Rogue replied finally, staring in the bathroom mirror as Catherine tucked long strands of her hair up in an elaborate style.

Catherine nodded. "My sister is a mutant, you know."

Rogue ran her gloved hands over the fronts of her thighs. "You still talk to her?"

Catherine looked a bit offended. "Of course I do. She's my sister."

Rogue just shrugged. "Not everyone sees it that way."

Catherine turned Rogue to eye her progress from the front, then began to adjust some curls and pins slightly to get just the effect that she wanted.

"You know, Rogue, I watch the news," Catherine said cryptically, not meeting her eyes. "And this is San Francisco."

 _Oh no._ "Yeah, quite a stir here last year. With the cure and all." Rogue tried to sound casual, and Catherine shrugged, then peered at Rogue directly for a moment.

"I just do what I get paid for," she responded bluntly. After a moment, she added, "Do you know him well?"

Rogue swallowed and raised one shoulder awkwardly, and Catherine just looked thoughtful and then turned Rogue to sit her on top of the toilet so that she could start doing her makeup.

"Can I ask you something?" Rogue said after a moment.

"Sure," replied Catherine, picking through her makeup case and examining various palettes against Rogue's complexion.

"How much is he paying you?"

Catherine shot her an amused look. "He wouldn't want me to tell you, I bet," she pointed out.

"Probably not. You gonna?"

Catherine tilted Rogue's face back and begin lining her eyes with a steady hand. "Two and a half grand," she said nonchalantly. "The corset ran about six hundred, the dress another four, and the accessories about three. The rest of it was for the rush and for my professionalism. Where 'professionalism' means 'not asking questions,' of course."

Rogue felt distinctly uncomfortable. Where did Magneto get that kind of money to throw away? Did it have blood on it? She exhaled slowly, trying to stay still enough for Catherine to work. She winced as Catherine applied a little concealer to the red skin around the cut on her lip, but the seamstress said nothing about it as she expertly covered it up. The mark on Rogue's neck had clearly been left by someone's teeth, but she only examined it briefly before she shrugged and decided to leave it alone.

Once her makeup was done, Catherine took her into the bedroom and started opening boxes. "It's all here, so take everything off," Catherine instructed her, if in a considerably friendlier tone than Magneto tended to issue orders.

Rogue blushed and stripped down awkwardly. She had rarely been naked in front of her peers... even when she'd had roommates at the mansion she tended to change her clothes in the bathroom, as her bare skin tended to discomfort others so much.

It appeared that Catherine couldn't care less. "All right, liner first," she said, handing Rogue a band of stretchy, soft black fabric. "Like a tube top around the middle. It's to protect the corset from the oils on your skin."

Rogue tugged it on and Catherine adjusted it into place, then opened another box and produced a stiff, elaborate garment in luxurious green silk and black lace trim. She moved Rogue in front of the full-length mirror on the back of the door and fitted the corset carefully around her waist, under her breasts, then stood behind her and tugged on various parts until the whole thing seemed to sit properly on Rogue's hips.

"I've never worked with this kind of closure before," she said nonchalantly. "I told him that you won't be able to tightlace yourself without standard laces, but he didn't seem to mind." Rogue watched in fascination as the corset began to change the shape of her body subtly.

"It's metal, isn't it?" Rogue said in a tight voice.

Catherine cleared her throat. "Yes. I do metal boning in all my corsets--the plastics just don't retain their spring the same way. I usually do a reinforcing band of heavyweight cotton under the narrowest part of the waist, but he wanted metal for that too. I had to figure out how to make that work. And then the closures. No laces."

Rogue's eyes were bright as she looked in the mirror. "Here, hands on the door, lean forward," Catherine told her, then began to tug in such a way that the corset began to squeeze Rogue's waist snugly. "I'm just going to get it down far enough to get your dress on."

"I've never worn a corset before," Rogue said, stretching strangely to feel the way it held her. "It's not terribly comfortable."

"It's not supposed to be," Catherine replied with a laugh. "There's no pressure on your ribs, right? No problem breathing at this snugness?"

"No."

"Good, then it's a perfect fit. All the restriction right at the waist."

It certainly looked... provocative, with her wearing nothing else. Her waist was compressed slightly, exaggerating her curves at both chest and hips. Rogue smiled a little. "What about underwear and bra?"

Catherine looked bemused. "He doesn't tell you a damn thing, does he? The dress'll take care of you up top. He didn't say anything about underwear. I think I know what that means."

Rogue muttered something to herself as Catherine began to open more boxes.

"Stockings and shoes and gloves next. Dress last."

Rogue seated herself and smoothed on a pair of sheer silk stockings, then slipped her feet into the heeled shoes that Catherine produced. The gloves were the same green as the corset, opera-length, and each seam lay flawlessly flat against her skin.

The largest box held Rogue's dress, which Catherine shook free with a practiced motion. It was made of sweeping layers of dark green silk, and Catherine carefully gathered it up and lifted it over Rogue's head.

She fussed with getting everything to fall in the right places. It had a halter top with a snug, deeply plunging neckline, and left her shoulders and upper back entirely bare. He didn't expect her to wear this with other people around, did he?

Rogue stared at a shocking amount of bare skin in the mirror.

"Perfect," Catherine finally pronounced, and Rogue had to admit that she looked rather... well. Stunning.

"You should stand up when you hear him at the door," she advised sagely. "That'll give the best effect to his first impression of you." And with that, she packed up her things and swept out the door, flashing Rogue an encouraging grin as she left.

Rogue sat carefully on the edge of the bed, staring at the clock and trying to refrain from chewing on her carefully made-up bottom lip.

She barely moved in the twenty minutes until she heard a footfall outside the door. Then she stood, as Catherine had suggested, turning so that Magneto would see her from the front as he entered.

She hadn't thought about what he was going to wear out for an evening that required her to be dressed like this, and found herself flushing slightly as he opened the door and she got a good look at him in an expensive suit and vest. She had no idea when he'd changed, but he was clearly already ready for dinner.

The door swung closed behind him and looked her over carefully, his expression betraying little.

"Turn around, my dear. Slowly," he told her, and she did, barely able to breathe, anxious with the desire to see him show some kind of approval. When she faced him again, he gestured for her to stand still.

"Lovely," he pronounced at last. "I told you it would be." Rogue could not hide her nervous smile in response.

"Just a few more touches for the evening," he said, and took a couple of steps closer to her. Her eyes locked on his as her breathing sped up, and he smiled in amusement at her immediate reaction.

"Dinner first, Rogue," he taunted, and unsurprisingly she blushed.

"Lift your arms," he instructed in a murmur and she obeyed, unsurprised when she heard the box on the desk open itself and a moment later her wrist and arm cuffs fastened themselves over her gloves. "Now your skirt," he said, and she lifted it to the tops of her thighs, spreading her feet so that both the thigh and ankle cuffs could clasp themselves over her stockings.

He nodded slowly and she felt a tug at all of her cuffs and the corset simultaneously. She nearly stumbled but regained her balance, feeling helpless and subject to his whim, her wide eyes fixed on his.

Which was making her absurdly wet. Which made him smile that slow, knowing smile.

"It's missing something," he said nonchalantly.

She swallowed hard. "It is?"

He raised a hand and the closet door opened and a velvet pouch of dark red floated over to them. He loosened the string and it fell away from the matte silver choker inside.

His eyes were gleaming as the choker fastened itself snugly around the base of her throat. Rogue's nipples were aching against the delightful texture of the silk, and her bare thighs were slippery with her juices.

"Almost ready?" he asked, and the wickedly triumphant look on his face suggested that he knew that it wasn't going out for the evening that she was truly ready for.

She whimpered. "Erik..."

"Shhh," he interrupted. He reached out a finger and brushed it against the choker at her throat, which tightened against her windpipe hard enough to restrict her breathing for a moment. When his finger moved away it loosened again and she gasped, one hand grasping for the back of the chair beside her to help her stay on her feet.

"Oh god," she muttered weakly.

His hand trailed downward, finger brushing her exposed breastbone for a fleeting moment, then placed his fingertips against the silk fabric of her dress at her waist.

The corset began to draw itself tighter. Rogue exhaled sharply as the compression increased to the point where it was almost, but not quite, painful.

Magneto stepped back and his eyes raked over her from head to foot. She swayed on her feet, unsure if she was lightheaded from the tightness of the corset or from the intensity of her arousal.

"I don't think I'm going to make it through dinner," she told him in a desperate voice.

"Oh, but you will, Rogue. For me." He drew her forward with his power and once she was close enough to feel the heat of his body, he pulled her up on her toes. His fingers grazed her nipple as his blue eyes moved over her face, lingering on the streak of white that Catherine had pulled back neatly into her chignon.

"We wouldn't want to be late, my dear," he said in a voice that made Rogue very, very much want to be late.


	10. Chapter 10

"I do not typically appreciate fusion cuisines," Magneto told her as he helped her from the back of the car. "I enjoy French food and I'm quite fond of Japanese, but most fusions combine the worst of two cultures. However, there are rare exceptions. And since we're in San Francisco and not New York or Paris, we might as well try something unusual."

Rogue's feelings of lightheaded arousal had abated somewhat during the trip to the restaurant, but she still felt strangely detached and astonishingly sensitive to Magneto's every move and word as the maitre d' seated them. She couldn't believe that she was allowing him to lead her through a room full of people with her shoulders and back so bare, and a small part of her was telling her insistently that she really _ought_ to protest right now. But he was using his power to tug very, very lightly on her cuffs and corset as she followed him across the room, and it was making it difficult to think clearly.

He was looking over at her with a raised eyebrow, and Rogue wondered if it was clear to everyone in the establishment that she was thinking of nothing except the fervent wish that her companion would finally take her home and fuck her tonight.

He moved smoothly in front of the maitre d' to pull out Rogue's chair, and as he seated her she felt his fingers brush lightly against her back from holding the back of the chair. It wasn't long enough for her to draw from him, but she realized that it could have been if the person seating her had been careless. So he was paying attention.

He'd arranged for them to have a fairly secluded table, but there was no way that he could ensure that no one was going to stumble or brush against her when passing by. It was going to be a catastrophe, and the one thing that she could never afford to be cavalier about was the possibility of hurting someone with her skin.

Then why could she not find it in herself to care more about this intolerably risky situation? Magneto's blue eyes were watching her shrewdly and she had the strange feeling that he knew everything she was thinking.

Rogue gazed absently at the menu, then opened it, more from habit than from a deliberate decision.

"I can translate anything on the menu for you," he told her, using her cuffs to place one of her hands on her lap. She inhaled sharply, fairly sure that he was doing it for no other reason than to control and unnerve her.

"I speak French well enough to handle a menu, thank you," she responded in a slightly strained voice.

"Do you?" he said, and she thought that she heard a note of actual surprise in his voice.

"Didn't you know? From your research?" Her tone was a little rebellious but for some reason tonight the idea that he knew things about her that she'd never told him just felt somehow, well... _thrilling_.

He smiled in amusement. "No, I didn't," he replied undefensively, and something in her relaxed just a little. She realized that she was still fearful of his ire after the mishap of the previous night, but it appeared that he was feeling companionable tonight.

_And anyway, we're in public right now. It's later that you should be worried about..._

He allowed her to choose for herself--why was she thinking of it that way; of COURSE she would order for herself--and looked slightly impressed at her selections and ease in ordering from the waiter.

"What?" she said, after the waiter had left.

He steepled his fingers in front of him, regarding her over the tops of his fingers. "My previous experiences with you led me to expect that you might feel a little out of your element tonight."

Rogue shrugged a little and took a sip of her wine. _That_ he'd ordered for them both. The waiter hadn't even looked askance at Rogue's youth. "I know you're more cultured that I am, but that doesn't mean that you can't take me out to a decent restaurant. My mama insisted that we have passable table manners before we were ten years old." She looked around; maybe she'd never been in a restaurant quite _this_ classy with her parents, but she wasn't terrified of using the wrong fork or anything.

"Your mama," he echoed in an amused voice.

"What? I'm from Georgia. I say ain't, too."

His eyes narrowed a little in a display of mock disapproval. "I'd noticed."

"Well, that's how we talk down south, sugah," she drawled in an exaggerated accent.

Magneto actually laughed aloud at her, and for a moment Rogue thought that she might not be completely out of her mind for thinking it was an acceptable idea to keep his company.

“Why do you speak with a British accent?" she asked him curiously. "Shouldn't it be German?"

He tilted his head at her. "Don't you know? From your... 'research'?"

Rogue realized that he meant his memories, in her head. “It doesn't work like that. I get snippets. Or even more like, stray observations, impulses. It's not, y'know, like a comprehensive copy of what's in your head."

He looked interested. "For instance...?"

She looked at him and worried at her lower lip. She wasn't sure how he felt about the fact that he'd left so many impressions inside her head.

"I remember a lot from the camp," she said quietly. "I think it's because you were so young, you know, you weren't so mentally disciplined yourself, like you are now, so those memories are more intense or something. Plus, you know. Well. It was the camp. And what they did was..."

He nodded, his eyes shuttered as she spoke. She took a breath.

"From later... well, it tends to be emotional things that bleed through. I remember bits from your marriage, from the end of your relationship with the Professor. Then just stray things."

Her description was interrupted by the arrival of their first course, and they both fell silent as they were served. Rogue waited until the waiter was out of earshot before she resumed.

"Actually, for some reason, Logan's memories are a lot stronger than yours, but your thoughts are stronger than his. Well, that is..." she trailed off, thinking.

"Rogue?"

She blinked at him. "You know, I hardly notice Logan at all lately."

Magneto deftly plucked sashimi from the plate between them with a pair of chopsticks. "It's been a matter of years since you had a 'dose' of him, so to speak. Whereas with me..." he smiled suggestively at her and she squirmed a bit on her chair.

"Well," she said reluctantly, then paused to take a bite, buying time to think about whether she should tell him that she'd been touched by Logan much more recently than he realized.

 _That would be dumb,_ she thought, but realized apprehensively from the way that he was looking at her that she'd already said too much, or in the wrong tone of voice.

"Rogue?" There was a warning note to his voice.

"Hmm?" She didn't look up from her plate.

Magneto cleared his throat. "How long?"

She took another bite, but that was only going to buy her so much time. It wasn't like she was going to be able to eat much anyway, as tightly as the corset was compressing her waist. She could feel his eyes upon her.

"When he came to visit me, after the last time I saw you before this trip," she said finally, "he, uh, kissed me for some reason. Just for a second."

"I see," he replied tonelessly, and her mind was scrambling for a list of defenses against whatever he was going to say. Logan had just _done_ it and she hadn't seen it coming. She hadn't really exactly kissed him back. And what did Magneto care anyway, since he wasn't her boyfriend or something. And anyway she was a free woman and could kiss or be kissed by whomever she wanted.

The last sounded a little silly, given her current predicament.

"My English sounds British, not German, to you because it was British English that I learned as a child, not American English." Rogue glanced up at him, surprised by the change of topic, but he was looking unperturbed.

"Oh. Yeah," she replied, a bit nonplussed. "That makes sense."

The waiter returned with their entrees, and they ate in silence for a few moments.

Rogue suddenly felt her knees and feet slide together under the table, and an upward tug on her corset pulled her up into a more erect posture. She made a small noise of surprise and glanced up, but he wasn't even looking at her.

He wanted her to remember that he was powerful.

And he'd made her into a puppet. As if she could forget.

His finger traced an idle circle on the table and the corset tightened a notch around her, which was enough to make her exhale sharply. She set her fork down with a clatter and her other hand grabbed the edge of the table.

"Relax, my dear," he chided softly, deftly cutting through his steak. She watched his hands handling his metal cutlery and was aroused.

She pressed her lips together, silently cursing her traitorous body for its response to his manipulation. "Hard to relax when you can barely breathe," she rejoined, her eyes slightly glassy.

"Take a drink," he suggested, and her arm moved toward her wineglass in response to his guidance. He couldn't make her grip the stem, but her choices were to obey him or to knock it over, so she closed her fingers around the glass and lifted it to her lips at his direction.

He was smiling coolly at her, and she flushed.

He was playing with her.

He placed her glass back on the table and returned her hand to her discarded fork. A wave of panic was trying to rise at her helplessness, but she pushed it down and picked up her utensil. He loosened his hold on her cuffs as she speared some vegetables, but then when she went to lift them to her mouth he froze her hand just shy of its destination, then pushed it back to the table.

She was shaking. Hard.

"Do you play this game with all your lovers?" she asked in a tight voice.

"No, not all of them," he replied with amusement.

He folded her hands in her lap then, and Rogue sat still and silent while he finished the last few bites of his meal. Once again the corset tightened another notch, and now it truly was painful.

"Erik," she said, an edge of fear audible in her words. "I really can barely breathe. It hurts."

"I know," he responded in a satisfied voice. "You'll survive until I'm finished here."

Rogue concentrated on breathing and not causing a scene as Magneto gestured for the waiter and settled their tab. It seemed to take forever for the staff to return with his receipt, and Rogue cursed silently as her ribs ached. She glanced up at him from beneath her lashes, and he was watching her with obvious relish.

Maybe it was time for her to stop being so shocked at the things that evidently turned her on. She was getting a little tired of being constantly surprised.

"I should have brought the barbell," he commented wryly, and Rogue's face began to burn as she thought about what he could with a metal object like that with no one around them being any the wiser. "I see that it occurs to you how I could make use of it."

Rogue shook her head no, and the choker around her throat tightened slightly.

Her eyes widened in alarm, but he didn't pull it hard enough to cut off her air. Evidently he realized that she really was on the verge of passing out.

Rogue looked around wildly, finding it inconceivable that she could be in so much pain and so aroused and everyone around her could remain oblivious.

She could not refrain from a sigh of relief as he stood and crossed around to pull out her chair, and the corset actually loosened a second before she needed to stand.

"Thank you," she breathed, a hand on his arm, as she swayed for just a moment before he tugged her toward the door.

"Hands, Rogue," he reminded her, and she pulled her hand away from him.

He had a firm grip on her as he escorted her outside and put her in another taxi. It took all her willpower not to pant like a dog in heat.

Rogue wanted to squirm but he was holding her perfectly still. He turned her toward him and made sure that she was watching as he produced his gloves and slowly pulled them on with all of his attention focused on her.

"Why aren't I allowed to touch you?" she asked plaintively in a low voice so that the driver would not hear her. She wanted to touch him so badly.

He ran a hand up her arm to above her glove, then wrapped his fingers around it. "I've allowed you to touch me," he responded, equally quietly.

Rogue could not think of a single time. "When?" His hand was running over her shoulder now, then up to the back of her neck and along the edge of her choker.

His finger trailing across the metal felt like a threat. From the look on his face, she had no idea if it was supposed to or not. But it made her shudder a little.

"Last night. When you were worried that you'd killed me. I allowed you to put your hand on my chest."

He was right. He'd immediately wrapped his own fingers around her wrist when she'd done it, but he hadn't stopped her.

"So, once," she admitted, letting her head fall back as he spread her knees beneath the skirt and ran one gloved hand up her thigh now, under her skirt, past her metal cuff. Her eyes flew to the rear-view mirror and she saw that the cabbie was indeed stealing glances at them as he drove. Magneto didn't seem to care. "But just once. Why?"

His hand stilled for a moment and he locked his eyes on hers. "Because that's how I prefer it, my dear," he told her firmly, then ran his thumb slowly over the crease at the top of her thigh.

She could not completely stifle the groan and she had to turn her head, mortified at the idea of catching the driver's gaze in the mirror.

"You are exquisite like this, my dear girl," he told her then, fingers caressing her thigh along the cuff he'd put on her. "I can feel these on you whenever I'm with you. It makes me acutely conscious of your body."

She turned her head the other way and buried it against his shoulder. His fingers slipped back up to her aching sex, and he rubbed lightly along her slit with an index finger, coaxing her lips to part.

"I can't believe you're doing this here," she muttered desperately, hands flexing on the seat. He had her knees parted farther now and it made her feel wanton.

His hand withdrew from beneath her skirt and skimmed lightly up her body, then he pushed the decolletage of her plunging neckline aside, exposing her breast.

"Jesus," she hissed, trying to jerk her hands up to cover herself, but he held her still. "Erik!" She was panicked.

His gloved fingers tugged at her nipple. "He doesn't mind, Rogue. I'm sure he's enjoying the view," Magneto murmured easily.

Her eyes flew to the mirror, and sure enough the driver was glancing frequently back at them. "You want me to park somewhere?" he suddenly called in an accent that was unidentifiable to Rogue. "I watch?"

 _Oh no._ Magneto chuckled. "No need, my good man," he responded personably. "Back to the hotel is fine. Though you may take the roundabout route, if you like." His hand was caressing her bare breast, and deftly he uncovered the other one so that she was completely exposed.

"You're insane," she whispered hoarsely.

"And you're phenomenally aroused," he returned, pinching hard at her aching nipple. "Besides," he said, leaning over and nipping at her earlobe, "he's just a human."

Her throat tightened at the jarring reminder of his identity. He reached down then and pushed her skirt up her thighs, exposing her fully to the air, and then slid his gloved fingers between her labia. He was holding her too paralyzed for her to even buck against his hand, and she bit her lip as his middle finger pressed its way inside of her.

"You can't--" she blurted.

"Oh, but I can," he interrupted, pulling out and pressing both his middle fingers into her on the second slow stroke. "You can't stop me."

He lowered his mouth to his breast and laved her nipple quickly, then pulled away for a moment before pulling it between his teeth and biting her.

"Fuck," she hissed angrily.

He sat up again and nuzzled against her hair. His fingers were pressing into her as deeply as they could given her angle, and the choker around her throat began to tighten.

"Please don't make me come here," she begged him openly.

"I was thinking today, as I walked around San Francisco," he murmured conversationally in her ear, "about this trend toward piercing that you young people seem to have. I have to admit that sometimes I'm tempted to give them a tug, when I notice some of the places that teenagers have taken to putting them." His thumb began to rub across her clit as his fingers continued to penetrate her, and Rogue groaned as she listened to his seductive tones. "Do you think that it hurts very much, to have rings put through your labia? Through your clitoris?"

Oh god he wasn't seriously threatening--

"I must confess that I even think that nipple rings look somewhat attractive. But I might be biased, considering what I could do with them."

She was straining against his hold on her now, barely aware of where they were or the fact that they had an audience. She'd never before in her life considered getting a piercing herself, not even when Jubilee had had her lip done and tried to talk Rogue into getting a bellybutton ring. But with Magneto's hand buried inside her as he mused on the possibilities, she couldn't help but envision him tugging on metal that stimulated her most tender parts as they sat in a crowded restaurant.

“Maybe I should have you get your tongue pierced. I could still it then, if I wanted to."

The collar around her throat was making it difficult to get enough air. Her eyes flew to his, wild.

"Do you want to come, my dear?" he asked her pleasantly, his palm pressing hard against her mons with each increasingly vigorous stroke.

"No, not here," she hissed pleadingly, but he seemed unmoved.

"Yes, here," he demanded, slamming his hand home violently, rocking her back against the seat, completely uncaring of the scene that he was making.

"I can't," she whined, though if he didn't stop what he was doing, she was going to whether she wanted to or not.

"You _can_ and you _will_ , now, Rogue." The pressure of his thumb on her clit was painful, and both the choker and the corset tightened suddenly around her.

It was too much, and Rogue came shuddering on his hand, head turned against his shoulder as far as she could, doing her level best not to make any sound and failing rather miserably. He chuckled and rocked her against his side as the movement of his fingers slowed, then finally he pressed his hand deep one final time and held it there as she finished spasming.

"Good girl," he murmured into her hair, and for some reason the words made Rogue want to cry. Her face felt like it was on fire and she continued to press it against his arm, unwilling to emerge.

After a moment he shifted, raising the arm that she was pressed against and putting it around her shoulders. He tugged her dress back into some semblance of order with his other hand, and pressed a light kiss quickly to her forehead.

The sheer normality of these actions unnerved her further, and Rogue simply clung to his side silently until he finally pulled her out of the taxi and up to their room.

 


	11. Chapter 11

As soon as they stepped into their own hallway and Magneto saw that there was no one around, he lifted her off her feet so that her toes were trailing above the carpet.

She had been silently and meekly compliant on the way up to their room, and she only gasped slightly as he lifted her. Their door swung open and he practically threw her through it and onto the bed.

She suddenly found herself able to move freely... even the corset and choker were only snug now, not discomfiting her. She pushed herself up on her hands and knees and crawled to the edge of the bed, where he stood, and pressed her face against his chest.

"Please," she mewled as he pushed his fingers into her chignon at the base of her skull and mussed it slightly as if he were scratching a dog behind the ear.

"Do you want something, Rogue?" he drawled with a smirk.

She sat back on her heels and gazed up at him. "You said that you would," she said in a small voice.

He chuckled. "I said that I would _what_ , my dear?"

Rogue frowned, knowing that he knew full well what she meant. Her body was humming, much like she had felt the metal in the room humming the previous night when she'd been filled with his power.

"You know," she said petulantly.

"I do," he admitted wryly, "but clearly I wish to hear you say it."

He raised a hand, palm down, and Rogue's back snapped erect and her arms rose so that her hands were clasped behind her neck. He also parted her knees slightly and pulled her feet closer together beneath her ass. Clearly he appreciated good posture when he forced a girl to kneel in front of him.

Rogue flushed in embarrassment, and wondered if that reaction ever wore off if one were constantly humiliated by one's lover over enough time.

Magneto leaned forward until she could feel his breath on her face. "Ask me for it, Rogue."

Her breathing was labored, though at the moment that was due to nothing other than his sheer proximity. She never would have believed that she would tolerate this kind of treatment. "Please. Fuck me," she made herself say.

He tilted his head, his blue eyes boring into her. He said nothing, and she realized he was waiting.

"Please fuck me, _sir_ ," she breathed in humiliation, and his smile was pleased.

"Why should I?" He stood up straight again and removed his jacket and draped it on the back of the desk chair, then turned back to her and crossed his arms and regarded her speculatively.

Rogue cast about for some kind of answer to that question. "I... don't know," she stuttered. "Because you want to?"

"Do I?" he asked wryly. "Are you sure?"

Her thighs were beginning to ache, and he allowed her to shift just minutely. She was blinking in confusion, not sure how to play this new game.

"I'm... not sure," she admitted, shame clear on her carefully made-up face. "But... you spent thousands of dollars to bring me here."

He gestured dismissively and Rogue almost flinched, not sure how she was going to be tossed about next, before she realized that it was merely a gesture.

"Money is nothing," he said scornfully, clearly entertained by her confusion.

"I..." she trailed off. "Maybe. But I know that you put thought and effort into this too. The cuffs. The corset. You didn't dress me up just to finger me in a taxi, did you?"

He looked as if he were considering her question seriously. "No, I didn't, though it's tempting now that I see how disappointed you would be."

She made a sound of intense frustration. "Don't you... don't you _want_ something?" she asked desperately. In none of their encounters so far had he orgasmed, or even used her to stimulate himself.

Magneto reached out and ran his gloved finger along the line of her jaw, and his eyes were blazing with intensity. "Yess.." he told her calmly, and Rogue shivered hard at his distinctive intonation.

"That's exactly how you said it--" she sobbed, then gasped silently, looking down.

His fingers had paused on her chin, and he was staring at her with a different kind of interest now. He let her arms fall and her posture sag, and her hands fell to her lap, twisting together.

"That's exactly how I said it?" he prompted her after a moment.

"When I asked you. If you were going to kill me. On the boat." She couldn't meet his eyes, and she felt a tear sliding down her cheek.

So why was she still so turned on that it hurt?

"Ahh, I remember," he said slowly, then paused in thought, studying her distress. "And what else did I tell you that night, Rogue?"

She was starting to sob quietly now, her hands pressing against her thighs. "You said... you said, 'There is no land of tolerance; there is no peace.'" She choked for a moment, then went on. "'Not here, nor anywhere else.'" She knew that those had been his exact words. She remembered them as if she'd heard them a moment before, not several years.

"Look at me, Rogue," he coaxed her gently.

"I can't," she nearly wailed, wiping angrily at her tears.

"Look at me," he snapped, and her eyes flew to his. God, yes. This _was_ the same man, and he was looking at her exactly the same way that he had that night.

"There _is_ no land of tolerance," he said to her slowly. "There is no _peace_." His intonation was exactly the same, though she'd not repeated his words that way. Her guts clenched in stark terror, and her mind seemed to freeze. She couldn't have looked away from him if her life depended on it. "Not here, nor anywhere else."

She was crying freely now, and for some reason she grasped at the front of his shirt, trying to pull him closer. He closed his hands over her wrists and held them there, refusing to move.

He tilted his head forward then, and his lips were nearly brushing hers, and she could feel his breath on her mouth. His eyes were still open though, and she stared into them, at this moment as in that one before, in actual fear for her life.

"I'll understand if that comes as small consolation to you," he murmured and she sobbed and pressed her mouth to his.

He tumbled forward onto the bed on top of her, his mouth meeting hers in a bruising kiss. He had her wrists pinned to the mattress with physical strength for once, and she felt his groin pressed against her hip. For the first time she had actual proof that he wanted her as badly as she wanted him.

She began to draw from him but he refused to break the kiss, devouring her mouth possessively even as he groaned into it. She was stunned by how long he held it before he finally tore away from her, gasping loudly, and she felt his power flowing through her veins.

She could feel the metal in her bonds and corset now herself, and some part of her understood his need to manipulate her with it. He was above her staring down at her, and she was still crying.

"You almost killed me," she cried in despair. "I was just a child!"

"You were a _useful_ child," he told her cruelly, "and I am a man who makes use of useful things. Just like I am now." He released her wrist from his grip but she still could not move it, and his hand found her breast and grasped at it with a force that was going to leave dark bruises.

His erection was still pressed against her, and astonishingly Rogue's leg came up to wrap around his hip and try to pull him closer. He laughed triumphantly.

"Beg me to hurt you, Rogue," he commanded, and she cried harder.

"Please hurt me, sir," she choked out in a cracked voice, feeling confused that she would ask for such a terrible thing, that she would ask it of HIM.

He crushed her nipple between his fingers, pulling outward at the same time. She wailed and shook her head violently, eyes tightly closed. His hand released her breast and she swallowed a sob when she felt the sharp impact of his leather-clad palm against the side of her face. Her face snapped to the side.

"Look at me when you suffer for me," he snarled in her face, and her eyes flew open.

_He was going to kill her._

"Please," she gasped again. "Please hurt me!"

"Ah," he laughed, pleased. "And I didn't even have to tell you to ask for it that time!"

He twisted his body between her legs and insinuated his hand between their bodies, shoving her skirt up to her waist as he did so. His gloved fingers pressed into her slick cleft, one, then two, then he shoved a third finger into her, stretching her brutally.

"Oh god," she wailed, "I can't take that much…” His invasion made her burn terribly. He pushed his upper body away from her and rested his left hand on the far side of her neck, then leaned forward again slowly so that his forearm pressed low on her throat, across her collarbones.

She opened her mouth, needing to call out to him, but it was neither 'Erik' nor 'sir' that came out of her.

"Magneto," she breathed in a voice thickened with lust and need.

The name of a terrorist. The name of a murderer. The name of the man who'd nearly killed her.

He smiled malevolently down at her. "Oh yes."

His fingers withdrew from her body and he pulled back from her slightly. She heard the zipper of his slacks and, a moment later, the distinctive sound of tearing foil.

She clung to him, shaking, as she finally felt the tip of him nudge at the aching place between her legs.

She was fantastically wet, and he thrust forward into her in exactly one motion with no resistance from her body, despite the fact that she could feel the size of him. She wrapped her legs around his waist tightly and he rocked forward into her with all his weight, and in this position she found that he penetrated her so deeply that the head of him pushed against her cervix, a slightly painful sensation that made her want him to slam into her violently.

"God yes, oh god yes," was all she could gasp as he finally began to drive into her.

At the end of every thrust he jerked hard downward on her corset with his power. Her eyes were locked onto his, her lips parted, and for some reason she found seeing the intense look of concentration and passion on his face almost as sexy as the feel of him violating her body as deeply as he could.

"You tried to kill me," she moaned softly, and this time her tone was not accusatory.

His hand found her breast and his fingers began to knead it. "I nearly succeeded," he reminded her in a rough voice.

She swallowed, thrusting upward in time with his grip on the metal she wore. "I was only sixteen." Her eyes were glassy.

That made him smile again, and there was nothing nice about his smile. "You were already beautiful," he told her, fingers digging into her flesh, into bruises that he'd already left.

Her arms were jerked high over her head by her cuffs, so far that she was painfully stretched between them and the downward pressure on her corset.

"You would do it again," she gasped, pulling hard at her cuffs, feeling them bite into her wrists.

"If I had to," he said grimly, his blue eyes gleaming with lust, and she felt his speed increase. His breathing was hard now, and she suspected that he was getting close.

She stared right into his eyes as she spoke. "If you have to do it again... make me come this time," she begged him in a wild voice.

She felt a surge of triumph as he groaned loudly and his eyes fluttered closed in obvious response to her words. There was a pause and then he surged forward into her with all his might, and Rogue barely had a moment to think -- _I did that to him_ \-- before her corset suddenly squeezed her waist with a brutal pressure and the choker on her neck tightened so much that she couldn't get any air at all.

Rogue twisted violently beneath him, her eyes rolling up in her head. Her hands were curled into claws that would have been at her throat, pulling at the choker, if they weren't restrained high over her head. She was utterly helpless as the metal that she wore turned against her and the man controlling it grunted his climax, pinned inside her body.

She was going to pass out.

Seconds passed as she fought for breath and he drained himself into her.

She was really going to pass out. Her vision was going white, dark around the edges, like a tunnel.

He collapsed on top of her, and the choker suddenly released her and she gasped painfully for sweet air that burned her throat as it went down.

He rolled off of her immediately and onto his back beside her, and she found herself free. The pressure of the corset had relaxed along with the choker. She breathed heavily, instinctively sliding her fingers under the choker as if she could prevent it from tightening again. She stared at the ceiling, and wondered how close she had really just come to being choked to death.

Neither of them spoke for many long minutes. She could hear him breathing beside her, gradually calming, but she didn't look over at him.

She was surprised when she felt him move slightly, and then heard the zipper of his slacks being pulled up.

"So," she said, her voice still shaking and now dreadfully hoarse. "Have you ever actually accidentally killed someone during sex doing shit like that?"

"Not yet," he replied, his voice sounding relatively calm compared to hers. "But then, I've never felt quite as provoked by a woman as I do by you."

A small, evidently suicidal part of Rogue thrilled in response to his comment, but a more level-headed part cringed in horror.

Eventually he sat up and looked over at her. He reached out and ran a finger briefly down the side of her face, and she flinched for a moment before subsiding.

His hand stilled and his face was thoughtful. "We'll talk tomorrow, my dear. For now, we simply must sleep."

Rogue felt her corset unclasp itself all together, and the sense of relief as she could breathe freely was a bit overwhelming. The choker also removed itself from her body, though the cuffs stayed in place. Rogue found herself quite unable to move, and he smirked a bit as he gestured at her and moved her to her side of the bed and threw the sheet over top of her.

 


	12. Chapter 12

Rogue awoke first in the morning and, after watching Magneto sleep quietly for a few minutes, she dragged her sheet with her out of bed and curled up by the window.

She had no idea what she wanted and she had no idea what was possible, anyway.

She was seriously disturbed by the previous night. She was seriously disturbed by the man sleeping on the bed. She was seriously disturbed by what he seemed to bring out in her. And she was seriously, seriously disturbed by the idea that even if she DID find it in her to walk away from all this, and even if he did allow her to do it, that she might never feel the way that he made her feel with anyone else.

Why should she be having the most insanely intense affair of her life with a psychopathic supervillian three times her age? He was handsome, yes, if it a way that was entirely different from Bobby or Logan, a way that she hadn't consciously noticed before he put his hands on her in that cafe all those weeks before. He was intimidatingly intelligent, but Rogue had never thought of intellect as a particular turn-on of hers before. After all, Logan was sexy, the Professor was not. Magneto was probably brilliant, she thought; also, he was mature, composed, charismatic... powerful, elegant. Ruthless.

Rogue glanced at him at of the corner of her eye, starting to feel aroused.

"It's baffling, isn't it?" he said, and she realized that his eyes were open and he was looking at her silhouetted in the window.

Rogue nodded silently, leaning her head back against the sill.

Magneto pushed back the blanket and sat up on the edge of the bed. He stretched slowly and ran his hands through his hair.

"You look like you've been hit by a train, my dear," he told her plainly. "Most of your makeup is on your cheeks and you never let your hair down before you fell asleep."

Rogue raised a hand to her face self-consciously, but he looked amused.

"It's quite charming," he said, "but perhaps you should clean up before I take you out for breakfast."

Rogue padded to the bathroom, still wrapped in her sheet. Strangely, considering what they'd done together, she still felt shy at the thought of walking naked across the room in front of him.

She brushed out her hair and washed her face and brushed her teeth; he was right, her raccoon eyes were dramatic. She began to slip on jeans and a tight sweater before she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and froze.

Her breasts were marked with large finger-shaped bruises, particularly around the top and outside curves, and her nipples were dark pink and showed mottled pinpricks from broken blood vessels. There were red streaks on her skin around her waist, especially at the sides, where the corset had pinched in suddenly. Her throat, though, was the worst, faintly discolored almost the whole way around, and his bite mark from two nights before had blossomed, so that while the red marks from his teeth had faded, a clear bite-shaped bruise had taken their place.

This was what he'd done to her. What she'd allowed him to do. This was what was driving her crazy with arousal. She shook her head and finished dressing, wrapping a light scarf around her neck.

He'd been back at his laptop while she was in the bathroom, then he went to wash up while she dressed.

She glanced darkly at the laptop, certain that it wasn't used primarily to browse his friends' online journals.

He re-emerged looking the most normal that she had ever seen him, if still striking... he wore casual dress shoes, khaki pants, and a dark blue sweater without any military styling to it. She blinked.

"No gloves," he told her as he slipped his wallet into his pocket.

"What? Erik, I can't go out without gloves." Rogue looked down at her hands.

"Of course you can. You went out in not much else last night and everything was fine. You'll be with me all day, Rogue."

She grew slightly warm at the reminder of the previous evening. "You don't understand how upset I'd be if I accidentally hurt someone," she said nervously.

He closed the space between them and put his hand on her shoulder. "Yes, I do, and frankly it's time for you to start getting over it. Now, I will bring mine, and you will leave yours here. Get whatever else you need for a day out so that we can go."

Rogue reluctantly did as she was told, and he led her downstairs and out into a cool, misty morning.

They walked a few blocks to a cafe in the Haight-Ashbury, Magneto shaking his head at all the tie-dye on display. Evidently the locals liked to sleep in on Saturdays, as it was mostly empty when they arrived and the tattooed white girl in dreadlocks at the counter yawned in their faces when they ordered. Rogue felt slightly rebellious as she ordered a sugary fruit dessert crepe for her breakfast.

"So what are we doing today?" she asked finally, watching in bemusement as he drank his first cup of coffee as fast as decorum allowed.

"Shopping, this morning," he said. "Then I thought you might enjoy a cable car ride up to the wharf, and then perhaps a walk over to the bridge."

"Shopping?" she echoed, a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach.

"Union Square, my dear," he said with a smirk. "Nothing too racy."

She nodded, then thought about the rest of what he'd suggested. She glanced around the cafe and lowered her voice. "You want to see the bridge?"

Magneto looked up at her shrewdly from his plate of fruit and yogurt and granola. "Yes, actually, I do." He sounded quite casual about it.

"Erik," she began, then bit her lower lip anxiously. She pushed some ice cream around her plate; it was melting quickly from the warmth of the crepe. When she glanced up again he was watching her expectantly.

Rogue took a deep breath. "It really doesn't bother you, all the people you killed? Like, not at all?"

He smiled again, somewhat unpleasantly. "I wondered when you'd work up the nerve for this conversation," he said, and she shrugged uncomfortably.

He sat back a bit and dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin, looking around the restaurant thoughtfully, and Rogue shuddered a bit as his calculating gaze moved calmly over the few humans in the room.

She looked around then, and spotted a young girl with hair a few shades lighter than her own, sitting alone and reading a high school level history textbook. Rogue nodded toward her.

"See that girl? That could have been me, right before my mutation manifested. Maybe she's never done anything to harm a mutant; maybe she's in favor of mutant rights. You might have killed her. Or, like, both her parents. She might be an orphan because of you. You wouldn't feel badly for her?"

He tilted his head and looked at the girl. "I would not be entertained by her suffering, if that's what you mean to ask. But neither would I feel particularly regretful, Rogue. In war, men die. It's a fact."

"Is it even an _unfortunate_ fact to you?" she asked, an edge to her voice, and he looked back at her.

"I am not particularly bloodthirsty, my dear. I am, however, perfectly able to do what is necessary and still sleep at night.”

Her mouth tightened as she forced herself to eat another bite of her crepe.

"Do you know," he asked conversationally, "what the final civilian death count was from my assault on Alcatraz?"

Rogue chewed silently for a moment. "In the low hundreds, right?" she answered in a tight voice.

Magneto shook his head slowly, a scornful look on his face. "No. It was seven."

She paused and stared at him. "That's impossible. I saw the footage."

"Oh, over a hundred died in the assault," he replied, returning to his own breakfast. "Most of them military men, and about a dozen mutants. Your Dr. Grey herself accounted for about seventy percent of the casualties. The only civilians who died were a result of my destruction of the bridge, and there were seven of them. Many of the humans made it off the bridge between when I stopped traffic and when I tore it free; most of the rest simply huddled in fear on the far side of the platform while the battle raged at the island."

"But... I saw the news reports..."

"Yes, and they were all rather misleading, weren't they? Suggesting that a hundred non-combatants had died tragic, unnecessary deaths, simply for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's not true." He returned to his breakfast.

Rogue stared at him in puzzlement. "Well, what are you saying?" she said finally. "Your... your disregard for human life is all a big misunderstanding? Were those seven an accident that you didn't see coming?" She looked dubious.

Magneto sighed. "Rogue, my 'disregard' for human life is a direct consequence of my awareness that we have a choice between our liberty and theirs, and that if it can only be one or the other, it ought to be ours. The conclusion that our place is above them is unavoidable, but I would wish them no particular ill will if I believed it was possible for us to co-exist peacefully."

He was giving her a hard look now, and she toyed unhappily with her spoon. After a moment it smacked itself down on the table and she jumped.

"Do I care about those seven humans? No, my dear, I do not. Would I have done the same thing if it would have killed a hundred of them? Yes, I would have, without regret. My point is not that I have some great respect for human life, merely that the way that you're insisting on framing the issue is insultingly oversimplified. Just like Charles' was."

Rogue said nothing for a long moment, and Magneto finished his breakfast without further comment.

Finally she looked up at his from under lowered lids. "But last night," she said, then stopped.

He looked back, his expression unreadable. "Yes?" he prompted.

Rogue glanced around again, but there was still no one near them. Her voice was a near-whisper. "You like to hurt me. You're... sadistic."

He removed his napkin from his lap and dropped it on the tabletop next to his plate. "Yes."

"You were... you--" she stuttered.

"Say it," he commanded, and she took a deep breath.

"You got off on, on the things that we were saying, about you almost killing me," she rasped. "You thought that was... sexy."

He folded his arms and leaned back slightly. "Yes, my dear, and so did you."

"But I've never actually killed anyone!" she said in a voice that was very slightly panicked.

Magneto closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them she shifted under the intensity of his gaze. "Rogue, I have never killed anyone merely for the sadistic pleasure of it, and in reality I have taken _no_ particular pleasure from almost any of the deaths that I have caused. Is that what you want to know? Whether I'm actually going to kill you for fun? To 'get off,' as you say?"

She barely heard anything he said after "almost any." She repeated what he'd said in her head... _I have taken no sadistic pleasure from almost any of the deaths that I have caused._

"Some of them, then?" she managed to croak.

His blue eyes flashed at her and he was silent for a long moment. Then: "Two."

"Oh god."

"And they were both individuals who very, very badly needed to be killed."

Rogue sat silent, feeling a bit dizzy, and he got up and took her arm and led her out of the restaurant.

He hailed a taxi, and as it was crossing the lanes of traffic to pull up to the curb, he grasped her upper arm and turned her to face him.

"I am _not_ going to murder you in a fit of erotic passion, Rogue. Ever." His voice was hard.

He pulled her into the car and said nothing else.

* * *

He finally spoke again after they'd arrived at Union Square. She was still stewing silently as he led her past Macy's and Sak's onto a small side street with a pretty white gate.

"I like you in dresses," he said calmly, as if he'd forgotten all about their previous conversation. "We'll get you a few, and some underthings. A woman your age shouldn't be wearing cotton panties."

"I feel weird about all the money you're spending on me," she mumbled, following him.

"Why?" he asked in a taunting voice. "Worried that I might expect your _favors_ in return?" She blushed.

Shopping with him was a strange experience. He took her into small boutiques, and for some reason the saleswomen seemed to figure out almost immediately that it was him and not her to whom they were selling. He consistently kept them well away from her as she emerged from dressing rooms with various amounts of skin exposed.

He dismissed many of the items that she looked at, but included others of her choice in the selections that he sent her to try on. He didn't bother to consult her for her opinion of the items that he picked out himself, but she found that all of them were garments that she found very pretty and flattering.

They weren't exactly her style, but they weren't exactly not, either. She'd always cared for silky textures and dark, earthy colors, which were exactly what he was picking out for her. If the styles were a little more classic than the things that Rogue owned, they also had a bit of a modern flair to them that suited her youth. And she was relieved that he didn't press her to accept anything that exposed an entirely inappropriate amount of skin.

At the last boutique, Magneto left all their packages with a manager and arranged for them to be shipped directly to his hotel room. Rogue felt vaguely bemused by it all. She felt a bit like a princess and a bit like a slave.

They waited in line for a cable car, and she found the sight of Erik Lensherr standing in queue with a bunch of human tourists to be a little surreal. He betrayed no impatience, though, and to her eyes there was something about him that seemed somehow apart from the chattering, crude throng around them. Once again Rogue reflected on the fact that her feelings for him clearly indicated that there was something pathologically wrong with her head.

She was delighted by the cable car ride, which crested several of the steep hills on the north side of the city, providing stunning views of the bay and bridge -- fortunately, it was the Oakland Bay Bridge, not the remains of the Golden Gate. She was enchanted to be on the old, loud trolley with its eccentric and funny conductor, making its way past the pretty Victorian mansions and pausing for the lovely vistas.

Rogue's hair had whipped into her face and she reached up to tuck the white strands behind her ear with her ungloved fingers. She was grinning wildly, and she looked up to see if he was appreciating the spectacle as much as she was.

He was gazing at her instead of outward, and her mouth suddenly went dry.

Both of their hands were gripping a metal bar between them to keep their balance. He slid his down and ran his pinky over her upmost finger, his eyes narrowing in concentration as he maintained the contact in spite of the pull that began. She shook her head no, glancing around in alarm, but he refused to let go for several long seconds before he slid his hand nonchalantly back up the bar.

She saw him swallow hard as he tried to catch his breath without gasping. She felt several impressions rattle through her brain that were clearly not her own... the glimpse of his bite on the column of her neck amidst the wind-whipped tresses of her hair, the white streak framing her laughing features, the sudden surge of desire to make her scream in either pleasure or pain, a fierce possessiveness and drive to make her obedient and available...

He leaned forward. "Can you feel the metal?" he asked in a low voice.

Rogue started. She was always so distracted by the push of a person's mind into her own that she rarely noticed their powers unless she was trying to utilize them, as she had with John, or unless she'd gotten a lot more of them into her than she did from a fleeting touch. But now that he mentioned it, she could detect the vibration of the metal of the trolley around them, similar to but fainter than the night that she'd drawn so much of his power when she'd orgasmed.

"Yeah," she said slowly, "I can."

"Feel downward," he murmured, and she shivered a bit at his mouth near her ear. "The cables and machinery beneath the street, that are pulling us forward."

She tried to "feel" downward as he suggested. It was a strange experience, temporarily having a sense other than the five that she'd been born with. The hum of the metal was much more like an auditory experience than a visual one... and yet it was somehow tactile, too, though tactile in the way that food in the mouth felt, not in the way that a surface beneath the fingers felt.

"Oh," she said suddenly. "I can... I can tell how it works, I think."

He smiled as her face lit up. "Can you feel this?" he said, and Rogue frowned as he manipulated the machinery that connected the car to the cable.

Magneto kept the trolley moving forward at the same pace that it had been, but unbeknownst to

the operator, someone else was now in control of its motion. Rogue glanced around, worried about whether he could see traffic around them well enough to navigate.

"You can't see," she hissed, and he smiled at her.

"I can _feel_ it all, Rogue. It's all metal."

She tried to reach outward further with his power as it slowly faded, and realized just how much metal was all around them. She felt fleetingly overwhelmed, and she marveled at just how much input he was able to interpret and how many factors he was simultaneously manipulating in order to move them safely through the streets.

He smirked at her and made a small motion with his hand that she recognized as him releasing control of the trolley. No one had been any the wiser.

She took a few deep breaths.

"A little thrilling?" he asked arrogantly.

She wanted to shake her head, but the fact was that it had been. It was a much more subtle display than ripping the bridge off its moorings had been, but she was still impressed by the nuance of his control.

"Maybe," she said reluctantly, and he chuckled. "But that doesn't mean it was a good idea."

He was studying her again. "No one at the school ever let you use your power on purpose, did they?"

Rogue looked outward again, not wanting to meet his eyes. "Peter grabbed me a couple of times to protect me from impacts. Other than that, not really. Bobby kissed me a few times just long enough for me to feel his power, but then he stopped doing it. I guess it was just too much."

His hand slipped idly into her hair and tugged on it gently in a gesture that could have looked merely affectionate. "No one there ever touched you as much as I have in the last four days, did they?"

Rogue's mouth tightened for a moment, and then she deliberately turned and looked him in the eye as she answered. "No, they didn't."

He just nodded, a satisfied look on his face, and continued to watch her as she went back to admiring the city passing by.

 


	13. Chapter 13

They stopped at the wharf for lunch, and Rogue had the strange idea that they were both keeping the conversation away from dangerous ground on purpose. She was afraid to allow herself to wonder if she had in some bizarre way come to mean enough to him that he was bothering to be careful with her state of mind. Her experience of him so far was that he simply took what he wanted from her and demanded that everything about their relationship suit him, and she was reluctant to entertain the hope that maybe SHE could have some kind of effect on HIM.

At any rate, he talked to her about the sightseeing that she'd done on her own for the past two days and asked her for her various impressions of the things that she'd seen. Rogue found herself warming back up to him slightly, although every once in a while she would suddenly remember what had happened between them the previous night and have an unpleasant moment of trying to reconcile that man with the one in front of her.

Or of trying to reconcile that woman with herself.

It was a long walk across the north end of the city, and she eventually found herself reaching out and taking his arm the way that he preferred. She and Bobby had always held hands when they walked together, but her present companion was an entirely different type of man than Bobby was.

Not that there was really any comparison in the relationships, either. After all, Bobby had been her _boyfriend_. And Magneto was... not.

"What's going to happen after you take me back to New York?" she asked him finally.

He didn't respond for several long moments, and Rogue actually began to wonder if he was simply going to ignore her. It wasn't a tactic that he'd used before, but even after three days together she didn't feel like she had any real idea of what to expect from him. Other than sex. And pain.

"I don't know," he finally said, and she blinked.

"What?"

He chuckled a bit at that, but the sound was rather melancholy, and Rogue had no idea what to make of this new side of him.

"I said, my dear, that I don't know what's going to happen after I take you back to New York."

"Oh." He'd always been the one to know everything about what was happening between them. "Well. Will I see you again?"

He glanced down at her. "Rogue, do you really imagine that I'm going to let you go?"

How did he manage to say these things in such a way that she didn't know whether to feel thrilled or threatened?

"I... I don't know," she said, looking out toward Alcatraz. From this distance, she couldn't make out any evidence of what had happened there, and she was refusing to look at the bridge. "I don't feel like I understand what's supposed to be happening between us, Erik. I'm nineteen years old. I had one boyfriend in high school and I couldn't touch him for most of the time we were together. I'm not like you. I don't GET this."

"You don't 'get' that a man and a woman could be dangerously attracted to each other in spite of troublesome differences between them?"

"You're _Magneto_ ," she said forlornly.

"Yes, it may surprise you to know that I was already aware of that. Don't you think that's at least a large part of the reason that you're here?"

She made a noise of exasperation and he sighed. "I am trying to be patient with you, my dear, but at some point you're going to have to accept that you are what you are and that you want what you want. You WILL see me again after you return to New York. Although I can't imagine coming to see you in that dreary little apartment of yours. Perhaps I will put you up somewhere that suits me better."

She gawked at him. "Are you _kidding_? You want to keep me in some place that you pay for?"

He made a gesture that indicated that it was a point of minor importance. "I suspect that it would be more convenient for me, so yes, probably."

"I can't do that." Her voice was stunned.

He stopped and grasped her arm and turned her to face him with a sharp jerk, looking down at her with a displeased expression. "Rogue, I have asked you this once before and I am going to ask you one more time, and this time I want you to think about it and _try_ to give me an intelligent answer. Why do you insist on resisting me in these matters?"

She cast around for some answer of substance. It seemed obvious to her that she couldn't go along with this plan, but when pressed for a reason it was difficult to put into words. "Well. What would Logan say?" she said desperately. "He'd never allow it."

Magneto's expression darkened further, and Rogue had a distinct impression that that had not been the right thing to say. "I am not in the habit of consulting the Wolverine for his approval of my decisions," he said in a very dangerous voice. "Now would you care to attempt to answer my actual question?"

Rogue faltered as she stared up at him, heart beating hard. "I'm not supposed to just want to do whatever a man tells me to. That's not right," she finally said in a quiet voice.

"I see. And yet your reactions to me lead me to suspect that you don't have much experience with obedience. Am I correct in assuming that you did not submit yourself to that ice-wielding boyfriend of yours?"

"Bobby?" She blinked. "No, of course not."

"And what about the Wolverine? Were you in the habit of doing whatever he told you to?"

Rogue flushed uncomfortably. She had certainly had some fantasies... but the reality was that Logan had never tried to boss her around, and that she had on several occasions made the choice that she was pretty sure that he wouldn't approve of. Like to take the cure, for instance. Or to press him to come with her and Bobby and John the night that the mansion was attacked, even though he hadn't wanted to.

"No," she said awkwardly. "Not really."

"Well, then," he said in a mock patient voice, "it seems to me that you do not want to ‘just do’ whatever a man tells you to do. You want to ‘just do’ whatever *I* tell you to do. You do see the difference, don't you?"

How did he make her feel so confused like this? The way that he said it made it sound like a reasonable thing for her to take orders from him. Part of Rogue wanted to point out that that sounded more like the military than a relationship, but then she didn't really know that they had a relationship either.

And besides, she was feeling rather warm with him standing this close to her, looking at her the way that he was. Would it really be so bad to just let him move her, if that was what he wanted? It wasn't like it would be bad to live somewhere nicer, was it?

"So you're saying that I should just obey you, not just... during, y'know, sex, or whatever, but whatever you tell me to do? I should just do that? Because I want to?"

Magneto closed his eyes briefly. "Yes, my dear, that is what I'm saying. Basically."

"Oh." She chewed on her bottom lip, looking somewhere in the vicinity of his chest. "Can we keep walking now?"

He gazed at her a moment longer, then muttered something that sounded faintly like "young people" under his breath and turned to lead her onward.

* * *

It turned out that he didn't have much to say when they found a good vantage point to look at the Golden Gate Bridge. Reconstruction had been proceeding rapidly, and the entire span was once again in place, though clearly far from finished. It was being rebuilt to its original specifications, though there had been a furious debate over whether to restore it exactly as it had been (to prove to Magneto that he had changed nothing) or to build back something more ambitious (to prove to him that the bridge was somehow bigger than he was.)

Rogue eyed the bridge warily as she stood beside him. She was a little bit nervous that he might take it into his head to tear it down again from where they stood.

She felt a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach as she looked at the vast damage that he had wrought, and she could not help but remember the video footage that she had seen of the massive edifice moving through the air above the bay. No one had taped it from close enough that Magneto himself was anything more than a grey smudge that was first planted on one end of the bridge, then hovering above it as he dropped it onto the island.

She shuddered and looked up at him, and saw that his eyes were hooded. For some reason, she reached out and put her ungloved hand on his forearm, holding her breath. He glanced down at it very briefly, but didn't snap at her to stop touching him.

After a few moments, he shook his head briefly. "Enough," he said curtly, then grasped her hand and tucked it into his elbow to lead her away.

Dinner was subdued, and Rogue was relieved when the explosive spark between them did not flare to life that evening. They returned to the hotel where he worked on his laptop and she curled up on the bed perusing one of her art history books. She took a shower and packed all her things back into her bag, and it was still relatively early when he put the cuffs back on her, ordered her under the covers, turned out the light, and a few minutes later joined her in the bed.

She was still half-awake, still pondering the enigma that was Erik Lensherr, when she heard him speak in the darkness. "When you return to New York, you may proceed with your plans to start classes at the college, and I will not forbid you to have farther contact with the X-Men. But, Rogue... you _will not_ let the Wolverine tread on territory that is mine. Do you fully understand me?"

Rogue licked her lips and stared at the ceiling, keenly aware of the heat of him beside her. A long beat passed in silence before she answered him.

"Yes, sir, I do."

 


	14. Chapter 14

Rogue was still mostly asleep when someone began pounding relentlessly on her front door.

She rolled over and groaned loudly. She'd only been home for four days, and she'd had to work two extra shifts for some of the people who had covered for her when she'd been in San Francisco. She didn't have to be at the diner until three o'clock today, and she'd very much been looking forward to sleeping in.

The pounding continued.

Rogue stumbled out of bed with a shouted "What!" She was pretty sure that Magneto was not in New York again only days after his trip to San Francisco, and anyway this particular brand of aggression wasn't really his style. It could be Wolverine again, she supposed, but she didn't really see him standing out there pounding away endlessly without saying anything either.

She pulled on her winter robe, rubbing at her face with one hand, and opened the door on its safety chain.

"Hey Rogue," said an unexpected voice in an unpleasant tone.

"Holy shit. John Allerdyce." She blinked at him a few times.

He scoffed at her through the three inches of the cracked door. " _Pyro_. And open the door already."

Rogue rubbed at her face some more, than took the door off its chain and opened it the rest of the way. He was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, just like he always had, though his face was considerably less boyish than the last time she'd seen him.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, still groggy, really wishing that she could wake up considering that she wasn't sure that John was at all friendly.

"The boss has got a new place for you. I'm here to help you move your shit." He was clearly less than pleased about it.

"What?" she said stupidly, then turned and made her way into the kitchen to put on some coffee.

"The boss. Magneto. I hear that you two are acquainted now."

Fortunately she wasn't awake enough to be fully embarrassed by the leering insinuation in John's tone. "He sent you to help me move?"

"That's what I said," he repeated curtly, sitting down on one of her folding chairs.

He said nothing while Rogue finished brewing the coffee, and she poured it into two chipped mugs and put one in front of him, black. He made a noise that might have been vaguely appreciative, and she sat down across from him and stared at him while sipping the steaming liquid as fast as was safe.

John was looking around. "We don't have to take any of this crappy furniture. Just your clothes and books and shit."

"Uh. Where is it?" she asked finally, her head slowly clearing.

"About six blocks from here. I went there this morning and got the key. Nice digs." He dropped a key on the table between them and looked at her speculatively. "So are you joining the Brotherhood or what?"

Rogue was silent for a moment. "Well. What did he say about it?"

John made a noise of irritation. "He said that I had to help you move your shit and that he'd beat my ass if I gave you a hard time. So he either wants to recruit you or -- this is weird -- fuck you, or both. And I can't see you changing sides, but Christ, I really can't see you in bed with the boss. Plus, you know. The skin."

He'd always been astoundingly tactless. Rogue looked down at her coffee, wrapping her hands around the warmth of the mug. "It's weird to see you," she said finally.

He just shrugged. "So did you take the cure?" His voice was sharply derisive on the last word. "Magneto wouldn't tell me anything."

She met her eyes and lifted her head. "So what if I did? It failed." Her voice was hard.

"Jesus, I just wondered. It was the last thing I heard about you. I'm just trying to figure out how you went from Xavier's Miss Goody-Two-Shoes to having your rent paid by the leader of the Brotherhood."

She shook her head. "You know, I ask myself that constantly." She looked around and took a deep breath. "Well, it's not like I didn't know this was coming, so I guess we should do it. Let me brush my teeth, and then--I guess we should go get some boxes? I don't have much stuff, but all I have to pack it in is my backpack."

"I brought boxes," he replied shortly. "You scrape that nasty shit out of the corners of your eyes, and I'll get them and bring `em up. I'm not gonna wrap your freakin' glasses in newspaper, but I'll throw your clothes in some boxes."

Rogue owned so few possessions that the move only took a couple of hours. The flat that Magneto had chosen for her was a sunny, cozy two-bedroom loft with hardwood floors and a new kitchen and bathroom. She walked in and saw the beautiful cast iron spiral staircase that led to the upstairs bedroom and could not help but smile.

It was fully furnished in a relaxed but contemporary style, right down to a full set of kitchenware. She wondered why he'd arranged for her to have place with two bedrooms until she looked in the guest room and saw that it had been furnished as an office.

She had a feeling that that wasn't primarily for her use.

John didn't seem interested in hanging around, and as he wasn't particularly congenial company Rogue didn't mind. He shrugged on his coat and fished in the pocket. "Here," he said curtly.

He dropped a couple of items on the dining room table. Rogue picked up the small, sleek silver phone and it occurred to her that it was identical to Magneto's. She remembered the communicator that Logan had found in Scott's car the night they had fled the mansion. "Is this, like, an official Brotherhood phone or something?" she asked dubiously.

John snorted. "Actually, yeah. But don't worry. You don't have to know the handshake or survive a hazing just to carry the phone."

The other item he'd dropped was a Visa. The name on it was Marie Davis. She looked at John.

"He said to tell you not to do anything to link your old name with this address," he told her, heading for the door. "I think you're gonna get the rest of your ID in the mail."

Magneto had arranged for her false identity? Rogue looked at the credit card thoughtfully. He hadn't forbidden her to have contact with the X-Men, but of course he wouldn't want them tracking her here to an apartment that he was somehow paying for. Right.

"So, later," John said, breezing out the door while she thought.

Rogue blinked. "Oh, hey, uh, John? Thanks," she said, and he waved a hand before disappearing.

* * *

As the days passed, Rogue realized that something more than the obvious had changed with Magneto's re-emergence into her life. She had not only spoken to him, but to Wolverine and to John. She was no longer really in exile, was she? She had begun her classes and cut back on her hours at the diner, which she supposed didn't really matter since she no longer had rent to pay. So not only did she now have contact with other people beyond the co-workers from whom she maintained so much distance, but she was doing something with her time that went beyond a monotonous routine that filled the days.

In a strange way, it felt like Magneto had brought her back to life.

"Hey, uh, Storm. This is... this is Rogue," she said nervously into the phone.

"Rogue," Storm responded warmly. "It's truly a pleasure to hear from you. How are you?"

"Well, I'm okay, actually. I was thinking of coming to visit for a day or two. Maybe this weekend. Wondered if y'all would be there."

"Of course we will. And we would love to have your company."

"Okay," said Rogue. And then she paused a moment. "Will, uh, Bobby be around?"

Storm's voice was smooth and composed. "Yes, he will, Rogue. Would you mind if I told him that you were coming? Your appearance could be something of a... surprise for him."

"Good idea," she responded. "So, I'll probably show up Saturday morning. Okay?"

"That's more than okay, Rogue," Storm said in a pleased voice.

It felt strange and awkward to go back to the mansion when everything had changed so much, including Rogue herself. The grounds looked much the same, though Rogue found her eye irresistibly drawn to the grotto where the memorials for the Professor and Scott and Jean stood.

She didn't think she could ever feel at home here again.

Rogue passed through the main entryway into the front foyer, wondering anxiously who if anyone would be there to greet her.

"Rogue."

His voice was as sweet as it had always been. Rogue turned slowly on the spot.

"Bobby," she said, and her voice was a little bit thick.

His eyes were searching her face intently and he took a step forward. "I'm glad you came." His gaze had always been sincere, open, and it still was, even after she'd abandoned him, and it made Rogue feel a weighty sensation in the pit of her stomach.

"I... I'm glad I did too," she said, taking a step toward him, and then they were embracing.

He clung to her with a little bit of desperation, his face buried against her hair, and she thought that maybe he was shaking slightly. "God, I missed you so much, I was so worried," he said urgently, his hands gripping her back. "I'm so glad you're home."

Rogue sniffed and took a half-step back and looked at him. "You know I'm not staying."

He looked pained but not surprised. "Well, you know I'm gonna work on you. You belong here, with us. No matter what happened."

She frowned a little, wanting to push his hair off his forehead and stifling the impulse. She started to open her mouth, but he interrupted.

"Never mind," he said. "Let's just enjoy your visit. Everyone's gonna be so glad to see you."

"Where's Kitty?" she asked, raising the topic so that she wouldn't have to wait for it.

Bobby looked uncomfortable. "She's upstairs. Rogue--"

"Bobby," she said, and she made herself smile at him. "I'm happy for you. It's okay. I don't blame her or you. I want to see you both."

He looked at her for a long moment, then smiled in cautious relief. "Okay."

They turned together to go up the stairs, and Rogue started as she realized that Logan was standing silently halfway down the staircase looking at them with an inscrutable expression.

"Logan!" she exclaimed, not sure after their last encounter if she should rush forward to greet him the way that she would have before.

"Hey kid," he said flatly. Something about the whole scenario seemed strangely familiar, and Rogue suddenly remembered a homecoming of Wolverine's when it had been Rogue rushing to greet him in the foyer and Jean Grey descending from above with her small, secretive smile. She almost shivered at the memory of the Phoenix before she had become the Phoenix.

"How are you?" she said to Logan, and she realized that Bobby's hand was still on her arm.

"Good," he said shortly. "You start school yet?"

She glanced over at Bobby, who was looking between her and Logan with a concerned expression.

"Yeah," she answered. "It's great. I like it a lot."

"Good," he said again, then finished his descent to the ground floor. "You'll have to tell me all about it later. I gotta go run an errand."

"Okay," Rogue said, cursing the fact that she felt three years younger the moment that Logan walked into a room. He stalked out of sight, and Bobby reminded her of his presence with a friendly bump. She looked up at him.

"C'mon," he said, and led her into the mansion.

* * *

She was surprised at how little it bothered her to see Bobby and Kitty together. The younger girl had been shy at first, obviously still feeling some kind of guilt for getting together with Rogue's ex-boyfriend after Rogue had disappeared. Rogue made it a special point to be friendly though, and eventually Kitty relaxed.

But clearly more had changed than the sleeping arrangements.

Rogue ate dinner with Bobby and Kitty and Storm and Peter that night, and while she found herself starting to join in the banter, there was a voice in the back of her head reminding her that she couldn't go back. That if they knew what she'd done, or more specifically with whom she'd done it, there would be no defense she could offer, no explanation, that would satisfy them.

And she was realizing that she wasn't any more comfortable with their complacency than she was with Magneto's ruthlessness.

It was Rogue who turned the topic to the failure of the cure. She hadn't been a part of mutant culture for over a year, and Magneto had not seen fit to fill her in on the specifics of the current political climate, so she really only knew what was in the papers.

"So what's going on with mutant registration now?" she asked over coffee, her gloved hands wrapped around the warmth of her mug. "I know that a lot of people started pushing for it again after Alcatraz and the failure of the cure."

Everyone glanced at her uncomfortably at mention of the cure, Bobby and Peter both at her gloves, but Storm looked at her evenly and responded. "Dr. McCoy has gotten himself well-positioned to prevent any registration act from actually passing, Rogue. We are not going to allow it."

"Uh huh," Rogue said slowly. "And what if it passes anyway?"

Storm gave her a strange look, and Rogue suspected that it wasn't so much the content of her question as the tone of her voice. "Then we'll keep fighting, Rogue. As long and as hard as it takes until the world is safe for all mutants."

 _As long as that fighting doesn't involve doing anything ugly that would actually be effective_ , Magneto whispered in Rogue's ear, and she tried to shake him off.

"Magneto set mutant rights back by a decade with the attack on Alcatraz," Bobby said to Rogue as if he sensed her skepticism. "Human-mutant relations were severely strained. Now more than ever we have to step carefully."

Rogue tried to ignore the mention of the man who occupied her thoughts, tapping on her coffee cup. "See, it seems to me that now more than ever we have to be ready to defend ourselves from the fallout."

 _Defend?_ Wait _for them to attack us again?_

Of the remaining X-Men, Storm was the most prone to anger over the intolerance that mutants faced, and she looked the most sympathetic to Rogue's vehemence. "Yes, Rogue, of course you're right. We must be ready for a worst-case scenario. But we also must balance that readiness against the need to avoid _inciting_ that scenario by appearing threatening."

"Avoid appearing threatening? Storm, we _are_ threatening!" She held up one gloved hand to illustrate her point. "The only way to avoid making humans feeling threatened is to hide who we really are, and we shouldn't have to do that!"

Bobby frowned at Rogue, his hand clasping Kitty's beneath the table. The younger girl was looking back and forth silently. "Not hide," said Bobby. "But we don't have to flaunt it either. There's just no reason to scare them even more."

Rogue looked around. Peter's expression was distant, but Storm, Bobby and Kitty were all watching her closely.

 _They aren't willing to do what it will take,_ Magneto whispered silkily.

 _That doesn't mean that heedless violence is the answer_ , she responded fervently in her head, but as she looked at the concerned faces of her former teammates she wondered what she thought the effective answer really was.

* * *

Rogue seemed to be up before anyone else in the mansion. She'd worked sunrise shifts at the diner the week before her visit, and she found herself grumpily awake and unable to drift back to sleep before six AM. So she got up and made herself a pot of coffee and sat outside on the veranda off of the Professor's old office, now Storm's.

"Hey. It's early." Logan turned the pretty wrought-iron chair across the small table on the patio backward and sat down straddling it, looking out over the lawn like Rogue was, a cigar already clamped between his teeth.

She glanced over. He was dressed in his customary wife-beater and shirt with the sleeves rolled at the forearm. It reminded her of the first time that Magneto had seduced her.

She pushed the thought aside.

"Couldn't sleep," she replied. "It's weird to be back here."

He grunted something like "yeah," and they sat together for several long moments, watching the edge of the trees on the far side of the lawn. Rogue thought about the fact that he'd tried to kiss her when he'd come to her apartment, and it made her feel strange and confused.

"So what do ya do at school?" he asked finally, crossing his muscular forearms over the back of the chair.

"Oh, it's way better than when I was doing general studies at NYU," Rogue said, relieved to have something else to think about. "I actually get to _do_ stuff, you know. Like, from the very first day. I have this class called Form and Function, and you have to, like, think about _why_ sculpture or art should be like this or like that. I always figured artists just do whatever occurs to them, you know, but there are _reasons_ for stuff. I had no idea."

"Huh," he said absently. "So you're making some masterpieces yourself?"

"Yeah," she said, warming to the topic. "That's how you figure out about the reasons that I just talked about. By experimenting. You try this or that and you see how it works or doesn't work, and then you really _get_ why instead of just thinking about it."

He was looking at her now. She felt a low burn deep in her tummy. Her mind may be obsessed with another man these days, but her body was clearly well aware of how distractingly masculine the one in front of her still was.

And she'd turned him away to go to San Francisco with a psychopath.

Another silence descended, but this time he was studying her. Rogue lifted her chin slightly and met his eyes, not belligerent, but tired of being intimidated and self-conscious with men to whom she was attracted. She was not the same girl she'd been before San Francisco, she told herself.

He raised an eyebrow.

"So when are you gonna tell us your secret?" he asked suddenly.

Rogue opened her mouth, then shut it, then thought a moment. "My life is no one's business but my own," she said finally, and she could tell from his expression that the fact that she hadn't just denied it surprised him. His eyes narrowed.

"You know, I know you're grown up now. And I know that I should have tried harder to find you after you disappeared." He took another drag on the cigar resting between his fingers, clearly intending to say something else.

"No, you shouldn't have, Logan. I needed to be alone."

He shook his head. "I made ya a promise, kid. I should have at least let you know that I cared enough to look, even if you didn't want to see me."

Well, maybe that was true. Rogue shrugged uncomfortably. "I dunno," she said, then remembered Magneto rapping her on the knuckles for that response during their first encounters.

Wolverine just continued to gaze at her. "I just didn't know how to make the switch, and so when you disappeared it... I don't know, Rogue, it was like this chance to try to wrap my head around the fact that you weren't this scrawny teenager anymore. I thought you'd be back in a couple of months and that I'd know what to do with ya then."

Rogue found herself reaching a hand out toward him, then let it fall on the glass top of the little table. "You don't have to 'do anything' with me, Logan. Just be my friend."

He squinted. "Yeah. Well. That's kinda hard, now that I've realized that you're a woman and so have you, and now you've started keeping secrets, too."

Rogue swallowed hard against the lump in her throat. "Logan. I'm... seeing someone, kind of. That's not a good word for it, but whatever."

His mouth thinned, and he nodded slowly. "Yeah. I figured that much."

/But there's more/, hung unspoken between them, and Rogue looked away.

After a moment he stuck his cigar back in his mouth and leaned back, hands clamped on the back of the chair. "You goin' back today?" he asked.

"Yeah." The morning mist was burning off slowly, and the lawn was starting to lighten in the sun.

"Kay," he said. "Look, kid... this ain't the same place it was when Chuck was here, I know you've noticed that. I don't hang around as much anymore. But if you call me and tell me before you're comin' next time, I'll be here if I can."

She glanced at him with a little smile. "You got a cell phone now, Logan?" she asked with a teasing lilt.

He grunted. "I got one of those damned communicator things now, and yeah, I actually take it with me on the road when I go."

Her smile widened a bit, and after a moment his expression softened. Rogue felt a small twinge in her heart as they gazed at each other.

"Okay," she said finally. "I'll call. I promise."

Logan nodded, then after a moment he patted her gloved hand and got up and left.


	15. Chapter 15

Rogue's life settled into a pattern that was mostly comfortable. Magneto seemed to find time to see her every two or three weeks, and fairly often spent the night at her apartment when he did. Her days were filled with work and school, her nights with art and reading and the occasional extremely kinky sex, and she found time to rent a car and drive up to the mansion every month or two.

Her lover remained a mystery to her in many ways. She began to avoid the news because she couldn't bear to be reminded of his activities any more than necessary -- the assassination of a prominent political figure who was pushing for mutant registration, the firebombing of a shady facility with a secretive research agenda, the gruesome murders of two men who'd raped a mutant girl and subsequently been lawfully detained for trial. (Both of the men had had numerous perforations from the barbed wire that had somehow been strung through their guts and knotted around their bodies. Rogue turned off the TV, thinking with a sick feeling of how aroused Magneto became whenever he used metal to penetrate or seduce her.)

Sometimes the Brotherhood claimed responsibility for the acts and sometimes they didn't. Rogue didn't know what made him decide which ones to claim. But the worst days were the ones when he issued statements to the media, and she would be at a cafe or at the store and she would look up and there he would be, erect and foreboding in his uniform, warning the humans of the world about the carnage to come until they allowed mutants to take their rightful place in society.

She could not bear to hear the things that people around her said whenever one of his statements was being played. She sometimes cried herself to sleep on those nights. Or drank a lot of liquor until she didn't hear his voice ringing in her ears. He was one of the most hated and feared men in the world, and she was sleeping with him.

But she never tried to refuse him her bed.

It was a Wednesday when he called her and told her to ensure that her entire Saturday would be free, and to be dressed in the corset that he'd bought for her when he arrived to pick her up for lunch.

Rogue was able to struggle into the corset by herself, though of course she couldn't tighten it down at all. She slipped on a lovely red dress that he'd bought her over top and a pair of opera-length black leather gloves that had long ago been a gift from Logan. Finally she put the box containing her cuffs on the dining room table so that they would be ready for him to put them on her.

Magneto arrived, wearing a suit and hat, exactly on time as he always was. "Good afternoon, my dear," he said cordially, shutting the door behind him with his power at the same time that the cuffs were already lifting themselves out of their box and locking themselves onto Rogue.

"Hello, Erik," she responded calmly, having finally learned to be at least a little less transparent about how his every manipulation excited her.

He took her to a small Greek restaurant for lunch and admonished her not to overeat. They discussed the play that he'd taken her to see the last time that he'd been in town, as she had had further thoughts about it in the days after he left. She tried to avoid thinking about what lay ahead of her -- surely he had some reason for having her dress up for him today.

After lunch he ushered her back into the car -- sometimes in New York he arrived in the same car that had taken them to the airport, with the mysterious driver that Rogue never met, and sometimes he used taxis. Either way he liked to expose, humiliate, and make use of her sexually... he had some exhibitionist impulse to display her so that others could witness what an object he could make her into.

Today was no exception, though Rogue presumed that the driver that accompanied him was either one of the Brotherhood or someone in his employ and so less likely to complain than a random taxi driver, though she'd been shocked at how few cabbies had objected to Magneto's strange predilictions as a client. She just silently prayed that it wasn't Pyro driving as Magneto shoved her back in the seat and untied the front of her dress, frowning when he encountered her bra.

"Get rid of it," he said curtly, and Rogue twisted in the seat to discard the offending garment, still unable to avoid glancing at the dark window that separated them from the driver, wondering what could be seen of her predicament.

Magneto was pulling on his thinnest leather gloves, a ritual that still never failed to quicken her pulse. Rogue was not wearing panties, so she was entirely exposed with her dress hanging from her shoulders around her as she sat back in the seat, her eyes beginning to glaze.

"I have a treat for you today, Rogue," he said, turning back to her now that her attire met with his approval. He lifted his hand and showed her a large, gleaming metal egg that he'd pulled from the pocket of his trench coat.

Rogue inhaled sharply. He had filled her with a similar object before, but it had been smaller than this one, and she remembered how heavy that smaller version had been. This one would stretch her even more, and its considerable weight would keep it pressing down at the sensitive bundle of nerves behind her pubic bone when she moved or walked.

"Spread your legs, little girl," he coaxed her with a wicked smile, and Rogue stared up at him and let her thighs fall open. The corset would not let her slouch, and it was tightening slowly on her waist as he guided the orb down to the throbbing center of her with the tip of a gloved finger.

"That's my good girl," he said softly, pressing the cool metal at the entrance to Rogue's sex, the contrast in temperature making her gasp. Just his fingertip rested against it, but it pushed into her with increasing pressure against the resistance of her body. Rogue opened slowly with a groan, no longer knowing or caring if it aroused her more to be stretched by the smooth slickness of metal or the warm, velvet invasion of his own body. All she knew was that he wanted something inside of her and that she could not help but to yield before his insistence.

"Good girl," he repeated in a pleased voice, and now she was stretched to the point of pained whimpering as the egg continued to force its way deeper into her. After a moment it slipped behind her pelvic bone, and she exhaled in relief. She still felt full from its size and weight, but not like she was about to tear any more.

He brushed his fingers against her mons and the egg pressed forward inside of her, toward his hand, stimulating her deep inside. The corset was tight enough now to begin to restrict her breathing, and Rogue would have been clinging to him if he hadn't trained the reaction well out of her.

He smiled down at her and tied her dress closed again. She whined at him and he merely chuckled. "More later, I promise," he said, his breath hot on the side of her face. "We have something to accomplish first."

The corset did not loosen as they arrived at their destination and he pulled her from the car, and Rogue had to concentrate on breathing slowly and shallowly as he led her into a nearly-empty, dim bar with mahogany tables and brass trim. He had never brought her to a bar before, and Rogue looked around vaguely as he led her straight to the bartender. The heavy pressure inside of her was... intense.

"I have an appointment with Stephanos," Magneto told the trim, well-dressed bartender, who motioned for them to follow and led them through a door behind the bar.

Up the stairs, through a tasteful hallway, to a beautiful oak door. The weight inside of Rogue shifted dramatically as she climbed the staircase and she knew that her juices were coating the insides of her thighs. The bartender knocked once and opened the door, gesturing them through.

Rogue was still quite distracted by the compression at her waist and the fullness between her legs, but had enough presence of mind to notice with surprise that the room that they'd been led to was evidently a library. Inside, a handsome dark-haired man looked up from the desk where he had several books open in front of him, then rose immediately.

"Mr. Lensherr," he said enthusiastically, coming forward to shake Magneto's hand. "It is a pleasure, truly an honor."

"I prefer Magneto." The two men faced each other as if Rogue weren't even present, and she stood to the side quietly, grateful not to have to climb any more steps.

"Of course, my apologies. Magneto. I didn't want to be presumptuous." Rogue noted that the man seemed quite sincere, and that Magneto didn't seem at all taken aback by Stephanos's obvious admiration. "And this must be the girl," he added then, glancing at Rogue. His gaze was neither dismissive or overly interested, merely polite. "She's quite lovely."

"Her name is Rogue," Magneto said, putting his gloved hand on her shoulder.

"Very good," Stephanos replied, adjusting the cuffs of his tailored shirt, over which he wore suspenders. "Would you care for a drink, or would you like to get started right away?" He gestured to the sidebar, where a variety of bottles were neatly displayed.

Magneto smiled. "We've just come from lunch. But thank you."

The man looked at Rogue then. "You've had a few minutes, I hope. Occasionally someone becomes nauseous if they've eaten too much."

Rogue attempted a smile, as if she had any idea what he was talking about. "I'll be fine," she said hopefully, glancing at Magneto, who was smirking in a way that did not make her feel any less nervous.

"Well then," said Stephanos, clasping his hands. "If you'll follow me."

There were two doorways from the library, and he led them through the further one into a small, clean room with a tile floor. The middle of the room was dominated by an examining table, and there were metal cabinets and trays around its perimeter.

Rogue froze and her eyes flew to Magneto, who pushed her forward gently with a tug at her cuffs. Stephanos seemed not at all fazed as he opened a cabinet and began to pull out supplies.

"Both nipples, ten gauge," he was saying to Magneto, who lifted her onto the edge of the table with his power. "You realize that's an unusually large diameter for the initial piercing; it will take a bit longer to heal. I generally encourage a twelve gauge to begin with." His dark eyes flickered to Rogue as she apparently was pulled into the air by an unseen force, but he made no comment. When she landed on the table the weight inside her made itself known again, and she had to swallow a squeak.

"I understand," Magneto responded, standing in front of Rogue and untying her dress again, then pulling it off of her and laying it across a nearby chair. Rogue blushed hotly and looked down, sitting in nothing but corset, gloves, shoes, and metal cuffs, her breasts and crotch entirely bare. "But the more substantial rings will do better if handled... indelicately."

From the corner of her eye Rogue saw Stephanos flash Magneto a small smile, and she wondered if it was possible to pass out entirely from embarrassment. Not that she was exactly getting her fair share of air at the moment, either.

Rogue was trying to get through the strange situation by thinking of it as kind of like being in a doctor's office... the man with the needles certainly seemed professional and detached enough, even if Rogue's attire was a little unusual. But Magneto was reaching out and beginning to play with her nipples, which entirely ruined the illusion of normality for her.

"Erik," she hissed as quietly as she could. He wouldn't appreciate any rebellion in front of an audience, but she was mortified enough that she couldn't stay entirely silent. He tugged hard at her breasts, drawing them into taut peaks, and she tried to suppress a moan as the egg inside of her pressed downward at the same time, increasing her feeling of fullness.

"Silence, Rogue," he instructed her simply, drawing one hand in a line down her body, sliding a finger between her labia. Her eyes flew to Stephanos, but he seemed content to pay attention to the items he was laying out on a tray before him.

Needles. Rogue wondered wildly how much this was going to hurt. She wanted to ask, but didn't dare. The orb inside of her felt nearly as if it was trying to pull itself out of her, which meant that the sensation of being stretched painfully was returning.

She moaned aloud, unable to stop herself, and Magneto chuckled as she turned her head away. "Don't fret, dear girl," he told her wryly. "I'm sure Stephanos has seen playthings even more wanton than you are."

"Oh god," she said in the smallest of voices, and felt her face burn even hotter when she heard Stephanos chuckle at her. It was one thing from Magneto, but this stranger...

"Oh god," she said again as Magneto slipped two fingers inside her until his fingertips were pressed against the egg and he shushed her again.

"Ready?" asked Stephanos, and Magneto pulled his fingers free and stepped to the side, wiping her juices off of his gloves and onto her leg.

Stephanos moved to the spot where Magneto had been standing, between Rogue's spread, nude legs. She felt the linen of his slacks brush against her inner thighs, and she stared at Magneto with pleading eyes.

Stephanos barely glanced at her face, all of his concentration on her breasts. He explained to Magneto that it was important to know whether Rogue's nipples turned as they crinkled when she was aroused, to know how to situate the piercings to sit most level both when her nipples were erect and when they were not. The two eyed her critically as her nipples slowly relaxed, then Stephanos carefully pulled on latex gloves and marked a purple dot on each side of each of her nipples with a surgical pen. His touch was light and professional, but Rogue still could look only at Magneto's thoughtful face, though he was not looking back.

"There," said Stephanos. "Now you should stimulate them to see how the dots shift."

Magneto flicked her nipple hard and Rogue turned her head as she gasped. He pinched and tugged until both were aching with their tautness, and Stephanos made small thoughtful sounds as he examined the result and adjusted his marks.

It seemed to take a million years before they were satisfied, and all the while Magneto was manipulating the pressure of the egg inside of her to torment her. Rogue felt like she was one of the canvasses that she studied in the studio at school instead of a living person who might have an opinion about what was happening to her.

"There," Stephanos said finally and looked at Magneto, who nodded.

The younger man changed his gloves with efficient motions, then dabbed some gel onto a cottonball and swiped her nipples thoroughly. Rogue chewed her lip, staring over his shoulder, still wanting very desperately to ask how much this was going to hurt.

She paled as he picked up a small pair of clamps with open ends that would allow a needle to pass through the clamped tissue. He applied them meticulously to her left nipple, and Rogue was surprised to find that they were considerably less tight than the pressure with which Magneto tended to pinch her.

Finally Stephanos picked up a small plastic package and opened it, pulling out a large hollow needle with a bevelled edge. Rogue's fingers grasped hard at the edge of the table and she looked at Magneto with panic on her face.

"The trick is to punch the needle through as fast and smoothly as possible," Stephanos was telling Magneto, placing its tip against the side of her nipple and holding the clamps firmly in his other hand. "And very, very careful with angle, to make sure that it's going to come through right at the center of the dot on the opposite side. You see?"

Magneto was leaning against the outside of Rogue's thigh, and he slid one hand down between her thighs and the other around her back. She thought that he was supporting her, but he slid his far hand under her arm and found her other breast. Stephanos simply shifted slightly to accommodate the slight twist to Rogue's position. "Yes, I see," Magneto said, watching Stephanos's motions carefully as the older man slid his fingers back into Rogue and made the egg inside her press down hard to stretch her passage.

She moaned slightly, closing her eyes, unable to watch their clinically detached expressions as she was being penetrated and stimulated before them.

"Shall I?" Stephanos asked suddenly, and Rogue didn't hear Magneto's response but he must have nodded, because suddenly she yelped as she felt stabbing pain sear through her left nipple.

The acute pain passed quickly but it left her head swimming, especially considering how tightly the corset was holding her. Magneto's fingers were pinching hard on her other nipple and the one that had just been pierced ached and burned fiercely. Rogue squeezed her eyes shut, feeling tears leak down her cheeks, and tried unsuccessfully to take several deep breaths.

"...came out fine," Stephanos was saying as she started to come back to the room and she realized that she was actually rocking against Magneto's hand.

"Too much," she moaned and forced herself to stillness. Stephanos gave her a fleeting smile as he picked up a silver ring and began to pass it into the hole left by the needle at the same time that he removed the needle itself. She felt a little numb and the insertion of the jewelry didn't hurt as badly as she might have expected. She forced herself to look down and was shocked to see only a tiny bead of blood on her areola.

Rogue was beginning to feel slightly less dizzy, and she willed herself to release her death grip on the edge of the table. She felt strangely disconnected as they talked a bit more and Stephanos went through the same preparation on her right nipple, cleaning and clamping it.

He started to remove a new needle from its plastic packaging when Magneto interrupted. "Do you think you can keep a steady hand if I have you wait until she's on the verge of orgasm?" he asked with a terrifying gleam in his eye.

Rogue shook her head desperately, her eyes wide, as Magneto again slipped his hand between her thighs. "We'd have to hold her still quite firmly," Stephanos replied, seeming completely unsurprised by the request.

"That's not a problem," Magneto replied, and Rogue felt her cuffs and corset suddenly become immobile. Magneto's thumb found her clit, and the egg inside of her began pressing rhythmically downward, stretching her and then relenting over and over.

"Oh god no please don't do this," she begged even as she felt the tension begin to coil. Magneto's expression offered no reprieve, and in her panic she could not help but to throw a pleading look at Stephanos. His expression remained pleasantly neutral even as Rogue began to try to squirm against her bonds.

"Sir, please, oh god please," she begged openly, too far gone to care about addressing him that way in front of an audience. He had learned her body too well by now though, and with the metal cuffs holding her there was nothing she could do to escape the building sensation that he was forcing upon her.

"Come along, my dear, you do want to amuse me, don't you? And I promise you that this will be most amusing."

She gasped, her vision swimming from the stimulation and the corset. Stephanos still stood between her legs, holding a sterile needle at the ready. She wanted to kick out, to arch back, but she could do neither.

"Sir, it's gonna be too much, I can't do this," she stuttered, trying to fight the rising tide and failing.

He was smiling at her knowingly. "Well then it's fortunate that you're not being given a choice, isn't it?"

He knew the signs of Rogue's impending orgasm well, and he gestured Stephanos forward with a look. Stephanos grasped both the clamp and the breast below it in a firm grip, positioning his hand expertly so that the needle would punch through into the space left between his latex-covered thumb and index finger.

"Don't do this, don't do this, please don't do this," Rogue cried, flinging her head desperately. "I'm not gonna come, I won't, I'm not gonna."

"Yes you are," Magneto corrected her, using both his thumb and the weight inside her to ensure that she would do as he wanted. "And I suggest that you try to hold still, as you may not like the consequences if you do not."

Rogue felt the wave about to break and she sobbed loudly, wanting nothing more than to make it stop and helpless to do so. Some small but desperate part of her brain commanded her body not to thrash, worried about what might happen if she did. She heard Magneto say "now," and then she was broken in half by the force of her orgasm, which was immediately in turn shattered into a million pieces by the terrible searing agony that shot through her whole body from the pinpoint of her right nipple.

Somehow, astonishingly, the orgasm didn't end immediately, but rolled over her in two or three waves of choking pleasure/pain. Stephanos didn't wait to start to fix the second ring in place of the needle, though, and his deft manipulation of her newly-pierced flesh felt intolerably stimulating as her climax was still surging. Rogue gasped and heaved, but the cuffs and corset provided enough immobile points under Magneto's control that she could not do much to disrupt Stephanos' work.

Rogue finally simply collapsed in her bonds, her head hanging forward limply and both sweat and tears dripping down her face. Magneto reached up and swept her long hair back over her shoulders, then placed a gloved hand on her forehead and pressed it back. Her eyes flickered open and she saw him regarding her with a hot gaze, and she vaguely knew there was no way that he would wait until they were back to her apartment before he fucked her hard.

Stephanos finished up efficiently and then took a step back to examine his work. Rogue was nearly insensate as Magneto said whatever he needed to in order to finish up and wrap Rogue back into her dress and escort her outside. Her legs were weak and he nearly dragged her into the car like a puppet, his hand wrapped around her upper arm to create the illusion that he was supporting her physically.

He maneuvered her onto her knees on the seat and shoved up her skirt. The egg inside of her stretched her cruelly as it pulled itself free of her passage and dropped onto the seat, then she was immediately filled with his warm, hard flesh instead as he pushed himself inside of her from behind. His hands slid under her arms and cupped her breasts, though he did not touch either of her aching nipples as he thrust into her forcefully. It all happened so fast and she was so light-headed that she didn't even notice him take the time to slide a condom into place, though he must have done so.

"Hurts," she groaned, hands braced on the sides of the windows, having been pressed there by the cuffs on her wrists.

"Yes," he agreed, his remarkable voice tight with his excitement and exertion. "And it will hurt again, when they've healed and I can make use of them."

Some small part of her felt relief that even he recognized that he would have to give her time to recover before using the metal in her nipples to torment her. The rest of her thought that she simply couldn't take the invasive friction of him inside of her anymore but flailed around with no way to put an end to it. All she could do was hang limply in her restraints as he did what he wished with her.

"You will go to the school tomorrow," he told her fiercely, hands tightening on her breasts. "You will find the Wolverine. And you will engineer the briefest slip possible of your skin against his to ensure that you heal from today."

Rogue's confused mind tried to make sense of his words. "No," she murmured in weak protest, "I can't do that."

"Of course you can," he insisted, pressing into her hard. "You can and you will. Because I have told you to."

She couldn't. She couldn't do that. She couldn't use Logan's ability for Magneto's amusement like that.

"Please... they'll think I'm careless... dangerous..." she pleaded softly, head hanging.

"Tell me that you'll do it, Rogue. Tell me now."

She hesitated, and he thrust deeply into her and held himself there. She could well imagine the displeased look on his face.

"I'll do it," she whimpered, not meaning to, not wanting to, but saying it anyway, because she couldn't bear his expectant stillness and silence any longer.

He made a soft sound and moved his hands to her hips before driving himself into her again. His fingers dug into her flesh as he pulled her back against him with both his hands and his mental grip on the metal at her thighs and waist.

"Good girl," he breathed, and his next two strokes were particularly ruthless before he drove himself into her a final time and strained into her with the force of his own climax.

He let Rogue collapse forward and she whined loudly as her weight fell on her bruised breasts. She didn't think she could move, though, as she heard him reassemble himself behind her and seat himself properly.

 _What have I agreed to?_ she wondered in silent horror, feeling like a damp and wrung-out heap of aches and twitches.

 _What is he going to demand next, now that I've agreed to this?_ a much smaller voice responded in the back of her head with a sense of terrible alarm.

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

Rogue thought long and hard about how to comply with Magneto's instructions. She was appalled at letting the X-Men believe that she would carelessly endanger, well, anyone, let alone the man who had rescued her from the Alaskan wilderness so long ago. But she was somehow even more appalled at the idea of facing Magneto again without having done what she'd agreed to, and so she applied herself to the problem with a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

She called Logan that night to tell him she was coming and make sure he could be around, and felt a sharp pang of guilt when he actually seemed pleased that she had wanted to see him enough to let him know that she was coming. Well, pleased for Logan, anyway.

He joined her and Storm and Bobby for lunch at the mansion, and if no one else noticed that she was unusually tense and reserved, she was fairly sure that Logan did. At one point Bobby reached across her for the pepper, almost jostling her arm into her dreadfully-sore breast, and Rogue jerked away with an excessive amount of avoidance even for her.

Bobby just looked a little hurt, probably assuming either that her skittishness about accidental contact had increased after being cured and then having it snatched away, or that she was particularly appalled at the idea of brushing against HIM, her ex-boyfriend. Logan, however, glanced over at her shrewdly.

 _He can smell how nervous I am_ , she reminded herself worriedly. The Logan in her head was almost entirely faded after all the contact that she'd had with Magneto in the last months, but she remembered very well just how keen his senses were.

After lunch she made sure to walk out of the dining room with Logan and caught his arm. "Hey, Logan, you wanna take me for a ride on your bike?" she asked as casually as possible. "I could use some fresh air."

He paused and looked down at her for a long moment, cigar clamped between his teeth. Rogue smiled up at him. "C'mon, sugar, I promise it's not just a cheap come on."

Logan snorted and pulled his cigar out of his mouth. "All right, kid. You better not scream on the tight turns.”

"Yeah, right," she replied teasingly, batting his arm lightly as she followed him out to the garage, hoping very much that she seemed like the same old Rogue to him right now.

Logan had taken her for two or three rides back when he was still the object of her every fantasy, and each time had been a delicious, aggravating torment to a girl with a terrible crush. She thought briefly of those days as she threw her leg over the back of his bike and slid onto the seat behind him. Despite the chilly day, her palms were sweating beneath the wrist-length gloves that she wore under her overly long-sleeved shirt. Logan kicked the bike into gear and pulled out at a speed that threw stones from under the back tire, and Rogue grabbed onto his hips, below the leather jacket that he wore, and scooted forward just a bit to make sure that she had as stable a seat as possible.

Logan took her up on the back roads, maneuvering them through scary hairpin turns at alarming speeds and accelerating aggressively on the straight stretches. Rogue clung to him, heart hammering from the thrill of the ride, her awareness of his masculine proximity, and the foolheartiness of what she was about to do.

She was clearly out of her mind.

It made her feel even worse that this was Logan as she liked him best... physical, skillful, not a man of many words but certainly a man of unflinching action. Rogue was still often baffled by Magneto's keen intellect and his articulate elegance, and though she thought that it was part of what drew her to him, she felt far more comfortable with Wolverine's more straightforward way of relating. And she certainly had no idea what Magneto thought of the fact that she was not the most intellectual of girls.

Rogue thought about this as she carefully pushed her short glove over the ball of her thumb and made sure that her sleeve was out of the way and her right hand was gripping him just at the top of his belt, a mere inch from the skin of his side. Her left hand was still well covered, and that one she used to hang onto him a little more firmly. She saw no reaction from him, and so steeled herself to wait for the right moment.

Rogue took a deep breath as they came into another series of tight turns and let her left hand loosen its grip just before he leaned hard into a turn to the right. At the deepest part of the turn -- which was indeed terrifying, as she felt like her knee was about an inch from the road beneath them -- she let out a little shriek of fear and grabbed his left hip tight with her left hand, as if she had forgotten to hold on and was now panicked about loosing her grip. At the same time she brushed the ball of her right thumb up under the edge of his shirt for a second, counting on the distraction from her other hand to disguise the obvious deliberateness of what she was doing.

She only needed a second and so she pulled away almost as soon as she felt the pull start. "Dammit," she heard him growl sharply and the bike wobbled minutely, then straightened, before he began to decelerate sharply and pull to the side.

"Oh my god Logan, I'm so sorry," she gasped from over his shoulder, pressed against his broad back by the force of his braking. "I just grabbed your waist and touched you. Oh my god. I have on gloves, I just didn't notice my sleeve ride up." The panic in her voice was not exactly contrived, though she still felt as if she didn't sound at all believable.

Logan slid the back wheel slightly as he pulled the bike to a stop. He turned as far as he could while still keeping the motorcycle's considerable weight well-centered and reached behind him to snap the faceshield on her helmet up. He wasn't wearing a helmet, of course.

"Marie?" he said in a strange voice, and he didn't sound at all angry anymore.

"Logan, I'm sorry, it was an accident, god, I'm so stupid," she blurted, worried by his choice to use her given name now.

He was silent a moment, and she could only see him in profile, though his face was only a foot from hers. Rogue chewed her lower lip, about to launch into a fresh round of apologies, both because she really was feeling nauseatingly contrite and because it was what he would have expected her to do if it really had been an accident.

"No, you're not stupid, but I'm startin’ to wonder if you think I am," he said slowly before she could speak.

 _Oh shit_. He wasn't buying it at all. This had been a stupid plan. Rogue barely even noticed that her new piercings didn't hurt at all any more, so at least it had worked in that sense.

"Uh, Logan. I'm really sorry. I don't think you're stupid. What do you mean?"

She didn't want to ask what he meant, didn't want to know what he meant, but knew that that's what she would have asked if she hadn't already _had_ a pretty good idea of what he meant, and so she had to say it.

He said nothing, just turned his head a few more degrees so that he could look at her over his shoulder. Rogue swallowed.

"Logan. I'm sorry," she said again in a small voice.

And was surprised when he turned around and opened the throttle and pulled back onto the road.

Rogue carefully put her hands back on her own thighs instead of continuing to hold on to him, which was scary but less scary than continuing to touch him under the circumstances. Logan said nothing else, but neither did he immediately turn around and head back to the mansion. She pulled her face shield down again as he took the bike back up to a terrifying speed and desperately wished that she felt okay about continuing to hold onto him.

The first straight stretch he reached behind him with his clutch arm and grabbed her left hand and pulled it back to his waist. Reluctantly she followed suit with her other hand and hung onto him as he took them through another half-hour of breakneck maneuvering before heading back to the mansion.

Rogue literally knew him in a way that no one else did, and knew that he was still driving because he was still thinking. She didn't look forward to hearing what -- if anything -- he would have to say once he was done, so she felt a sense of dread when she finally realized that they were heading back in the direction that they had come.

The wind was fierce and biting by the time that they returned to the mansion, late in the afternoon. Logan pulled the bike into its usual location with deft skill, and she slowly climbed off the back, removed her helmet, and thrust her hands into her pockets.

He swung his leg over the seat and turned to look at her. He was only a couple of inches taller than she was -- not nearly as tall as Magneto -- but his powerful physique and the way that he carried himself made him an extremely imposing man. Rogue took a deep breath and straightened to her own full height, determined not to cower. She was not helpless.

"You should scrub a little harder in the shower if you're gonna come see me the day after you've been with him," Logan drawled thoughtfully, his narrowed eyes searching her face.

 _Fuck_.

"Two days and I wouldn't have known. But only a day, and with the way he's all over you? Wasn't good enough."

She raised her chin a bit, refusing to defend herself, no idea what to say if she'd wanted to anyway. Logan's mouth was drawn into a thin, unhappy line.

"I told you that my business is my business," she said finally.

He raked a hand through his wild hair. "Right. That's some business."

She wanted to shift her weight uncomfortably, but didn't. She wasn't the little girl that she'd been when she'd once begged Logan to stay at the mansion. She could catch and keep the attention of a powerful, striking man like Magneto. She could hold her own here.

"If you don't tell him to lay off the rough stuff, he's gonna seriously hurt you," Logan said after a long moment. "Or do you even like the rough stuff? Maybe he wouldn't lay off if you told him to."

She blushed hotly but met his eyes. "It ain't all that different from what you like, sugar. Remember, I know," she said with a rueful half-smile.

"I pick women who know what they're gettin'," he growled. "Not teenaged girls who've barely been touched." He turned away from her in frustration with an angry look on his face.

"Yeah, well, look where that got both you and me," Rogue replied harshly. "I wouldn't know what I'd be gettin' with you, so you protected me from it. He didn't think I needed to be protected, and now look whose bed I'm sleeping in."

Wolverine looked disgusted. "Jesus. That's how it is." He shook his head as if to clear it. "You one of them now? /Rogue/?" His voice was hard on her name.

She suddenly looked around, remembering that they were back in the X-Men's mansion, but no one was around. "No, Logan," she said warily. "I'm... with him. Not with them." She threw up her hands in a little gesture of her own frustration. "Look, I know it seems crazy. It seems crazy to me too. But it just... happened. And I wanted it to, bad idea or not. Like... like that girl in the truck in the Midwest, the brunette with the tattoo, I don't have her name."

Logan looked very far from convinced. He stared at her and she stared back, wanting him to understand if only a little bit, but knowing she wouldn't stop even if he condemned her for it.

"Rogue... you don't remember what happened after you passed out up there, on the Statue. I'm the only one who saw you though, kid, and you were dead when I pulled you out of that machine. I never... I never told you this, it never came up, but when I first put my hand on your face, there was nothing. No deadly skin. Because you were _gone_." The look on his face was deeply grim. "I knew I was too late, I knew you were dead. I knew he'd killed ya."

She chewed hard on her bottom lip, eyes moving over his face as she took a step closer. "I know." It was all she could say.

" _That's_ the man whose bed you're sleepin' in?" He paced away from her for a moment, then back. "Do you hear yourself?"

He wasn't ever going to understand, not even a little bit. She shrugged a little. "Yes," she said simply. "It is, and I do."

Finally he stilled, though his expression still betrayed his agitation. He looked at her for a long moment, clearly looking for some sign that wasn't there.

"Well, I don't know what to say to that." He turned away from her. "Later, kid."

Rogue watched his tense, retreating back, though she said nothing until the door into the mansion had slammed behind him. "Later, Logan," she whispered quietly.

 


	17. Chapter 17

Rogue ran a dish towel over the front of the fridge for the third time in an hour, searching critically for any errant fingerprints that had not yet been polished away.

She was ungloved, wearing a sleeveless lace shirt -- one of the few remaining items in her regular wardrobe that she had bought for herself -- and a brief, elegant dark blue skirt that Magneto had brought her from one of his trips abroad. She had come home from her afternoon class covered in plaster, but a thorough scrub in the shower had remedied that.

Even now, even after Magneto had taught her over time to be a little less paranoid about her skin, she rarely wore this little clothing even when home alone. But if there was any mutant other than Magneto who Rogue expected to be dangerously canny about her skin, it was the one that she was expecting tonight, and if there was any mutant other than Magneto who Rogue wanted to remember that she herself was dangerous too, it was the same one.

Twice before Magneto had called her and told her to expect one of the Brotherhood to sleep in her second bedroom, but both times it had been Pyro. Rogue had avoided the news even more than usual on those days, not wanting to see any headlines that might suggest what criminal act she was aiding and abetting by harboring her old friend from school on those particular evenings. Pyro had shown up late each time, had slept long, and on the second morning he'd even gotten up and rummaged in her fridge and made breakfast for them both. He still asked pointed questions about Rogue's undefined relationship to the Brotherhood, but other than that he was actually remotely cordial company on that second morning.

But earlier today Magneto had called her and told her to expect a house guest in the (unpredictable) form of Mystique that evening, and then hung up before she could even formulate an objection, much less consider whether to advance it.

And so she was obsessively polishing her kitchen appliances, relatively certain that Mystique couldn't care less whether there were smudges on top of the range.

The knock came quite late, and Rogue thought that even its character was curt and mocking. She rushed to the door, then smoothed her skirt and unlocked the deadbolt.

A tall, stunning black woman with her hair in an elaborate knot and wearing an exquisitely tailored suit swept past Rogue with barely a glance, depositing her briefcase on the dining room table and morphing immediately back into her lithe natural form as Rogue swung the door shut behind her.

"Hello," Rogue said firmly, looking her levelly in the eye, and Mystique smirked unpleasantly.

"Oh, yes, quite bold, I'm very impressed," she responded in her strange, hollow voice. "And not wearing gloves, either. Is this supposed to convince me that you're not some frivolous toy of Erik's, but a dangerous mutant in your own right?"

Rogue cursed the blush that rose on her cheeks, but tried to take comfort in the fact that a few months ago she would have been trembling in this situation. She managed to maintain a reasonably composed expression as she began to walk across the room to her own desk in the living room, where her textbooks sat open. "It's obvious where the guest room is," she said in her calmest voice. "I don't see any reason for us to pass the evening chatting.”

The older woman made a derisive noise in response, but Rogue refused to look back at her as she sat down at her desk and pulled her book toward her. It turned out that was a mistake, as a moment later she was grasped by the upper arm and yanked unceremoniously from her seat.

"I don't think you understand the situation, Rogue," Mystique told her coldly, shoving Rogue to her feet in front of her. "It is not your place to dismiss me."

She had shifted again and appeared to be clad in a high-necked, fitted black bodysuit, though it was still her own blue skin and yellow eyes above it. Rogue's brow furrowed as she stared at the taller mutant. She hadn't given any thought to whether the "clothing" that Mystique clad herself in when morphing had the characteristics of skin or of cloth, but the fact that she had just been yanked to her feet by Mystique's apparently gloved hand seemed to provide the answer.

"What?" said Rogue angrily. "What do you want with me? Magneto said you'd stay here tonight; well, the couch where Pyro slept is in his office over there. You and I don't have any business."

Mystique's lips curled into a lazy smile. "Don't we? Unless you'd care to start showing me the proper respect _right now_ , then I have the very important business of teaching you your place with me."

Rogue put her hands on her hips. "What place? I'm his lover; you're his… colleague, or whatever you two are. We're nothing to each other. I ain't part of your Brotherhood."

Mystique laughed in her face. "Oh, this is priceless. You truly don't understand." Her fathomless yellow eyes narrowed. "You're not Magneto's 'lover,' you fool, you're his pet. And I'm not his 'colleague,' I am his second-in-command. Which means that whether you're part of the Brotherhood or not, you are very much subject to my authority, and you're going to answer both to him and to me until you start to show his lieutenant some of the deference that you've learned to show him."

Throughout this little explanation Rogue paled considerably. So okay, this was Mystique's version, but surely this wasn't how Magneto would perceive the dynamics at play... was it?

She frowned as snippets of his memories surfaced and Mystique looked satisfied. "Yes, it starts to dawn on you, doesn't it? Magneto has no 'personal' relationships that he considers exempt from the militarism of his life and cause. You think that we obey him because of ideology and you obey him because he knows how make you wet, but you should realize that to him it's all the same."

Rogue shook her head in denial. "He can't really expect me to obey you," she said stubbornly. "He knows I ain't one of his soldiers."

Mystique seized her upper arm again, her fingers digging painfully into the flesh on its underside, and yanked her close enough that Rogue could feel her breath on her face. "You may not be part of the Brotherhood, you twit, but you are _his_ and therefore you will obey whomever he wishes you to obey. And whether it's occurred to you before tonight or not, he expects _all_ his playthings to obey me."

Rogue's pulse sped up a little bit at the closeness of this dangerous mutant. Her eyes widened. "You don' t mean--"

Mystique gave another throaty, derisive laugh as her eyes raked downward over Rogue's body. "Well, that wasn't what I meant, but yes, that too, if I wanted. Erik has always been happy to share his toys with me."

This was not good at all. It never would have occurred to her that Mystique might make some sort of... sexual demand, and it _certainly_ never would have occurred to her that Magneto might expect her to comply with it. And what did she mean, "all his playthings"? How many others had there been? Were there others right now?

Rogue turned her face away from Mystique. "Look, I--I'm sorry if I was rude. Could you please let me go now?"

Mystique huffed in amusement and released Rogue's arm, shoving the younger woman away from her as she did. Rogue stumbled, then righted herself and eyed Mystique warily.

Mystique was staring back in a calculating manner. Part of Rogue still wanted to blurt, "Just how many 'playthings' does he have?" but she reckoned that that would put her another notch down in the power struggle.

Mystique reached up toward Rogue's face, who flinched but forced herself not to yank away. The metamorph ran her finger along the streak in Rogue's hair, a gesture that Magneto himself sometimes used and that caused Rogue's stomach to knot unpleasantly, then ran a thumb over Rogue's lower lip. The texture of the glove she wore was heavy silk, unlike Magneto's warm, fine leather.

"Well, you're certainly pretty," Mystique was saying critically, "and you're dangerous enough, I suppose." Her thumb ran along the crease of Rogue's mouth, a gesture that Magneto used when he expected her to part her lips, but she could not bring herself to do so for this woman. She was startled to find out that the intimacy of it was enough to make her pulse race slightly, which she tried to ignore.

Taking a step closer, Mystique looked down at her from her greater height. "You must be good for something in spite of that skin of yours, or he wouldn't bother to keep you." Rogue swallowed hard. "What do you think, you mouthy bitch? Shall I see for myself what it is that my dearest friend finds worthwhile about that tight little body of yours?"

Rogue wanted to step back but didn't dare. "I--I'm not... I've never..."

She was met by a scoffing noise. "I, I, I," Mystique mocked. "Surely by now Erik has taught you that _this isn't about you_." She slid her hand against the side of Rogue's throat, her thumb wrapping under her jaw, and though she didn't squeeze, the gesture alone seemed to evoke an unwelcome response even when Rogue didn't care for the person doing it. Rogue was appalled as her eyelids fluttered slightly.

Mystique sneered and leaned in even closer. "Ah, you _are_ a submissive one, aren't you? No wonder he likes you."

"No." Rogue tried to shake her head slightly but not much resulted. "I may have to obey you, but I won't like it. Not like with him."

Mystique lifted Rogue slightly by the throat and Rogue pushed up on her tiptoes, gasping, wide eyes fixed on Mystique's unnervingly calm face. The woman's strength was astonishing. "You'll like what you're told to like," she informed Rogue in a chilly voice, then abruptly released her with a shove. Rogue stumbled again and coughed as she tried to put some distance between them.

Mystique crossed her arms and watching as Rogue tried to compose herself again. The younger mutant straightened and looked at her with a wary gaze.

"You... you've made your point. I'll try--" here Rogue looked down, humiliated, "I'll try to be more respectful."

"And obedient."

Rogue hesitated. "Yes."

"Really?" Mystique's echoing tones were skeptical. "Then strip for me."

Oh no. Rogue blinked. There was really no way to defy her order only a second after telling her that she would obey, but what if Mystique really did intend to do something sexual? After knowing about Mystique and Magneto's past and about Mystique's interest in Logan, Rogue had assumed that the metamorph was, well, just interested in men, like Rogue was. Even the same men, evidently.

She could see no way around it. Taking a deep breath, Rogue pulled her top over her head and dropped it to the floor, then unzipped her skirt and let it fall down her legs. She kept her eyes downcast and paused again, but she could feel Mystique's expectant gaze still upon her, so she reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, then pushed her panties over her hips.

At the sight of Rogue's piercings, Mystique laughed aloud. The sound was not kind. "I see that fucking a little girl has widened Erik's tastes to include some modern fashion trends," she said in an amused voice, stepping forward and grabbing the ring in Rogue's right nipple. "I feel sure that you didn't have these when he first decided to make you into his own personal pet."

The tug of the cold metal made Rogue's nipple tighten immediately and she fought not to yank away. She could feel the hot flush the whole way down her body.

 _Between your thighs, too, my dear_ , her inner Magneto taunted, and Rogue tried hard to avoid noticing that he was right.

"And these," Mystique said thoughtfully, letting go of Rogue's nipple and running a finger down the cleft between her legs, over the three small rings that pierced both of Rogue's labia and held them together. "I bet that these don't open for anyone other than Magneto himself, do they? Knowing him, they're solid, and not even you can remove them." Rogue closed her eyes in mortification, feeling Mystique's finger dip very slightly between her lips above the first rings, knowing that for some strange reason there was slickness there. Mystique had leaned in again and was whispering in Rogue's ear. "Who doesn't he want to be able to touch you, Rogue? I hear that he still allows you to go back to that silly school of yours. Is Magneto marking his territory against Wolverine's sniffing?"

Rogue shook her head no, though she knew the answer was yes. Her teeth were gritted against the teasing sensation of Mystique's fingers on her labia. Why wouldn't she just stop? Would Magneto really expect Rogue to endure this?

Suddenly the older mutant stepped back and Rogue sighed in relief. "Where does he keep his toys?" Mystique asked brusquely.

Rogue glanced up in alarm. "What? You mean--"

"The cuffs, the barbell, whatever else he has here. Clamps, I presume. The sex toys, Rogue. I know Erik. Hell, I bought him half of that stuff. Where are they?"

"Wh-why?" She knew she shouldn't ask, but the word just came out of her mouth.

Mystique sighed and took a step forward.

"Upstairs!" Rogue blurted. "In the bedside table, in the loft!"

Mystique gave her a sharp look, then turned and climbed the beautiful spiral staircase to the loft. Rogue stood awkwardly in her living room, not daring to move, entertaining a brief, spiteful fantasy that Mystique really was out of line and that when Magneto found out what she'd done, he was going to be enraged at her.

She wasn't holding out much hope about ever seeing that happen, but it was a deeply fond thought at the moment.

She heard Mystique rummage through the drawer for a moment, which of course including many clinks of metal against metal, before coming back downstairs. She returned with her selections in her hands and Rogue paled even further.

"Luckily for you, I'm tired tonight and I don't really feel like playing," Mystique told her in a bored voice. "However, I also don't feel like having to teach you your place more than once, so I'm going to make sure that the lesson is well learned."

"It is!" Rogue said quickly, wanting to back away but knowing what a bad idea that would be.

Mystique grabbed her and turned her and cuffed her hands behind her back, not with the cuffs that Magneto used, of course, but with a pair of standard handcuffs. Mystique then slid a blindfold over her eyes -- it was cloth, but of course it had metal eyelets. Then Rogue was startled by Mystique thrusting her fingers into Rogue's mouth and pulling her jaw open. Rogue tasted rubber as the large ballgag was forced between her teeth and the strap buckled tight behind her head.

Cuffed, blindfolded, and gagged in under a minute. Rogue's heart was hammering in fear. With Magneto, this was foreplay. She had no idea how Mystique intended to use it to drive home the lesson about her authority.

Mystique seized her by the arm and dragged her across the room, then the sound of a light chain made clear to Rogue what was coming next. She tensed right before Mystique grabbed first one nipple, then the other, letting a small clamp close on each behind the piercing. Her nipples were far more sensitive now that they had the rings in them, and even though the clamps weren't adjusted to be cruelly tight right now, Rogue knew from experience that within ten minutes her nipples would begin to ache.

Then she was turned toward the wall and her breasts were lifted away from her ribs as Mystique somehow attached the chain that connected the clamps to a point on the wall that was well above chest level. Rogue cried out a bit around the gag... it wasn't exactly painful, but the discomfort was significant.

She heard and felt Mystique take a light step back to regard her handiwork. She tried to breathe slowly, to relax her muscles, fairly certain that she was going to be here a while and knowing that her ordeal would be worsened if she stayed as tense as she now was.

"Hmm," she heard Mystique say, then her nearly-silent footsteps carried her away and there was the sound of a door opening.

Rogue adjusted her arms behind her back to be as comfortable as possible and pulled back very slightly from the attachment point on the wall to see if she had any chance of pulling free of the clamps. She was pretty certain that her piercings guaranteed that she did not, so she wasn't surprised when the clamps became too painful to bear well before they began to slip off her flesh. She relented, breathing hard, horrified by the slick feeling at the crease of her naked thighs.

She wasn't aroused by this. She wasn't.

Mystique returned, and Rogue felt her snake her hand between Rogue's body and the wall and massage each of her nipples briefly. Nothing noticeable changed, however, and she leaned her head forward in curiosity and concern. Then a finger slid into the top of the cleft between her legs... the rings in her labia were set far back toward her perineum, thus preventing Rogue from being penetrated without interfering with her ability to urinate or to masturbate. The gloved finger rubbed briefly at her clitoris as it had over her nipples, but again Rogue could not figure out what was accomplished by the brief touch.

There was a moment of stillness before Rogue began to feel a distinct burning sensation on her clit first, then on her sensitive nipples. She squirmed and turned her head toward where she believed her tormentor to be.

"Menthol," Mystique said shortly. "It's in almost every bathroom."

She waited as the burn increased enough that Rogue was whimpering in protest, then she moved in close.

"Those were just to give you an idea of what was coming," she told Rogue in a very quiet voice. "The real issue is going to be the more liberal amount of menthol that I'm about to put here." And she slipped a finger between the cheeks of Rogue's tensed ass, rubbing lightly against the puckered indentation there.

Rogue shook her head ferociously, making panicked noises around the gag as best she could. Regardless of Rogue's thoughts on the matter, Mystique efficiently followed through on her threat, the tip of her finger pressing just a little way into Rogue's ass as she spread the sticky cream around.

The burning started much more quickly on the mucous membranes there than it had on her nipples, and Rogue could not help but to pull against the clamps on her nipples as she writhed from the searing heat in a place so intimate that not even Magneto had touched her there. The pain was bad, it was very bad, and Rogue had no idea how long it was going to last.

"Good night Rogue." Mystique's voice cut through the agony, and Rogue panicked. She wasn't going to leave her here like this...?

Apparently she was. Rogue began to sob, but she heard nothing except for Mystique's retreating footsteps and the sound of a door closing.

She couldn't possibly intend to leave her here all night.

There was little Rogue could do for relief. The intensity of the burning was so horrific that Rogue wondered wildly if the menthol was doing any actual damage to her tissues. Shifting did little good, and she couldn't move more than a few inches with the clamps firmly in place behind her piercings. She cried pitifully with no respite, tears running down her cheeks from under the blindfold, snot starting to run down her upper lip.

After an eternity Rogue's tears slowed as she began to notice that the burning was abating slowly. She couldn't tell if she'd been standing there for ten minutes or an hour, but she had not heard another sound from the apartment. It was then that she began to realize how badly her nipples were starting to ache from the unrelenting pressure of the clamps.

 _Oh god, that bitch._ She knew the menthol would wear off at the same time that the clamps really started to become unbearable.

The burning continued to fade, but now Rogue's attention was firmly elsewhere. She gritted her teeth and tried pulling free one more time, knowing the pain was going to intensify badly if she was successful as the blood rushed back into the clamped tissue, but desperate to put an end to her ordeal.

It didn't matter. She couldn't see, but whatever Mystique had done to her was not something that she was simply going to be able to pull free of, no matter how willing she was to bear the pain that it took to do so.

Rogue was beginning to cry freely again, imagining being forced to endure this torture until Mystique got up in the morning. It must have been hours since she had been left alone, but some small part of her was well aware that her sense of time was probably wildly distorted by her pain, and that it might not have been nearly as long as she hoped since Mystique had retired.

Her legs were beginning to ache, her arms to cramp from being cuffed behind her back. Her ability to shift slightly helped to relieve those pains for a little while, but her nipples were becoming so agonizing that after a while her other complaints began to seem insignificant in comparison.

Rogue had stopped shifting much and was standing quite still and silent and miserable against the wall, tears drying on her swollen breasts, when she heard the front door unlock and swing open.

There had been no rattle of the key first, which meant that it could only be one person. Rogue heard a click and saw the faint outline of light at the edges of her vision, and her head snapped up and toward the front door.

She heard two steps, considerably heavier than Mystique's, and then a pause and a moment of silence. She whimpered deep in her throat.

Magneto began to laugh.

Rogue made sounds of distress as loudly as she could around the gag strapped tight into her mouth. She heard his footfalls again and waited desperately for the sense that he was standing beside her, but it did not come.

"I thought that you might give her some attitude, my dear," he said in an entertained voice. It occurred to Rogue that he must not be able to tell from looking at her how long she'd been here or how much torment that she was in, but she had little way to convey the intensity of her plight.

Another door opened, though Rogue didn't know if it was the bathroom or the guest room. The sound of Mystique's sleepy voice resolved the mystery. "It's been over an hour. Do you want me to let her down?"

An hour? _One hour_? She was insane. That was impossible. It had to have been at least three times that long.

She sobbed, needing, _needing_ Magneto's answer to be yes. "I think you've made your point to the girl," he said, sounding not at all bothered about it. "And since you've left me with such a lovely treat to arrive to, I think I may... relieve some tension of my own before bed. I'll take care of it."

Oh god. He was going to be the one to release her, which was good, but he didn't sound like he was going to do it right away, which was much worse than bad. At this point Rogue would rather have been fucked six ways to Sunday by Mystique than left where she was, even with the improvement in company.

"Want some privacy?" Mystique asked, and Rogue heard no audible reply from Magneto but also did not hear the bedroom door close again.

Suddenly the upward pull lifting her breasts away from her body was gone. Rogue screamed behind her gag--the bounce of her breasts as they were released caused the ache in her nipples to become even more terrible for a few long seconds. She sucked in air, realizing that the clamps were not gone, and that she was being pulled downward now. She backed quickly away from the wall to avoid hitting her head as she bent at the waist, her legs protesting angrily after their long stillness.

Nooo. She couldn't take having the clamps pulled on. There was still no one near her, which meant that it was Magneto responsible for her change in position.

Rogue felt the manipulation of the rings holding her labia closed, and suddenly her sex was not just released, but was actually spread open as her piercings were tugged outward toward her thighs.

"I was amused by that, Erik," Mystique commented wryly. "A clever idea."

"Some of these young people have their tongues pierced, you know, which was what first gave me the idea. Though I haven't gotten around to that; I seem to have gotten distracted by other possibilities that opened up." Now he -- well, one of them, she assumed it was him -- was behind her.

She hung her head forward in defeat and shame. She didn't even care what was going to happen next any more; all she could focus on was wondering how long it would take. She presumed that Magneto intended to "release some tension" by fucking her, which he sometimes liked to take his time about.

_Oh please god let him be exhausted enough not to drag this out._

"Did you make any other use of her?" Magneto was asking, as a hand stroked the curve of her ass. Rogue noted the soft buttery leather that meant it was his and she pushed back slightly into his touch despite her distress.

"No. Apparently she's a little shy with women." The metamorph's sarcastic voice was closer now, and Rogue silently wished her away. Or, like, dead.

She heard the familiar crinkle of foil. Oh god, he was going to fuck her like this right in front of Mystique.

He made a sound of amusement. "She's a little shy about everything. She gets over it fast." Well, there went her wonderful fantasies of Magneto turning around and punishing Mystique for what she'd put Rogue through tonight.

"Well, I know that you're fond of her, so I was being nice to her," Mystique responded, and Rogue almost choked in outrage.

She felt the familiar nudge of him demanding entrance into her body. Clearly he had no shame about sex in front of Mystique. She knew that they had been lovers themselves, but Rogue had no intention of ever having sex while holding a casual conversation with Bobby.

Magneto pushed into her, his hand resting low on her back, and Rogue moaned softly. "Well, my dear, do you think that you'd like to provoke Mystique again in the future?" he asked her lightly, pulling her back against his hips.

She could not respond verbally, but she shook her head weakly and heard Mystique's low chuckle.

Mystique was at Rogue's side now. Another set of hands settled on her back and the girl shuddered in revulsion. She wanted it to be revulsion.

"She'll get used to me if you're going to keep her around," Mystique said, her hands sliding around Rogue's side and finding her swollen, burning nipples. Deft fingers closed over the clamps and slowly began to release the pressure that was tormenting her.

"She'll regret it if she doesn't," he agreed.

Magneto's strokes were long and slow, and for some reason Rogue could well imagine the look that the other two were sharing as she was bent blind and mute between them. In all that Magneto had put her through, Rogue had never felt so fully reduced to the status of an object for his amusement. She suddenly found that she had it in her to begin crying anew, and though she told herself that it was from the terrible rush of the blood finally flowing back into the long-crushed tissue of her nipples, she knew that that was not the only reason.

With the clamps finally gone, there was no metal keeping her in her current position, as he had not taken a mental hold of her piercings. Mystique's hands wrapped around her breasts, her palms pressing against their peaks, and for some reason the firm pressure was soothing to the battered flesh instead of aggravating. The older woman was braced against Rogue's side, holding her still while Magneto took her in a leisurely fashion and she cried silently between them.

"It's been a while since I've had the pleasure of seeing you like this," Mystique said to Magneto, and a detached part of Rogue wondered what "like this" was supposed to refer to, but at the moment she was in no shape to ponder the puzzle. She vaguely noted the warmth in Mystique's voice when she spoke to him.

"You know that I appreciate your delightfully competent assistance in every project that I undertake, my dear," he responded, in a voice that didn't seem to Rogue to reflect the exertion of his current occupation at all.

Every second of remaining on her feet was a trial, and Rogue prayed for him to finish. His pace sped up only a little as he built closer to orgasm, and Mystique began to press Rogue back against him in time with his strokes. His hands tightened on her hips and he pulled her back hard, once, and held her there while she felt him spend himself inside of her. Mystique promptly unbuckled the gag and pulled the blindfold from Rogue's sweaty, tear-stained face.

Rogue gasped in relief as her jaw finally closed, then her sobs broke aloud as Magneto pulled himself free of her body and they allowed her to collapse onto the floor. She blinked through her tears, looking up at them above her, and was horrified by how composed and unruffled they both looked.

Magneto was smiling at her in his usual arrogant fashion, but Mystique's expression was inscrutable. They exchanged a look and he inclined his head toward the guest room, and Mystique nodded in response.

Then she turned and squatted down and took Rogue's chin in a light grip, tilting the girl's face up toward her. Rogue hiccuped and did not pull away.

"I suppose you could have done worse," Mystique said finally. "You'll learn." With that, she unfolded her long physique and disappeared into the bedroom with silent steps.

Magneto reached down and pulled her up by bodily force for once, wrapping his arm around her to support her weight. "Time for bed, my dear," he told her simply, helping her up the stairs to the loft where they would sleep.


	18. Chapter 18

Rogue awoke to the feeling of Magneto sliding his gloved fingers between her legs from behind.

"Mrrph," she commented sleepily, feeling her upper leg shift slightly to accommodate him thanks to the metal cuff around her thigh. "S'early."

"It's after nine," he murmured, pressing up against her and following his fingers with another part of him.

Rogue pushed back toward him, sighing as his hand found her breast and gently rubbed her still badly aching nipple. His touch was soft, but after the battering of the previous night it still made her hiss and arch.

"We just had sex like minutes ago," she mumbled, meaning the previous evening, but having passed out in between, that was very much how it seemed.

"You're nineteen," he said, fully finding his way inside of her. His face was pressed against her hair, and he nipped at the lobe of her ear. "There's no such thing as too much sex when you're nineteen."

"Yeah, well, you're like eighty, you're not even supposed to be having sex any more," she responded, moving in time with his slow rhythm.

There was a sudden sharp twist to the piercings through her tender nipples and Rogue swallowed a gasp. "Watch yourself," he said warningly, thrusting into her more insistently, tangling his hand in her hair and pulling her head back against his shoulder.

He took only a few moments to finish, then straightened his pajamas, discarded the used condom in the trash by the bed, and sat up. She felt the rings in her labia close themselves again; she still hadn't gotten used to the bizarre sensation.

She was nude and cuffed, as always when they slept together, and she peered up at him from her tangle of sheets. Today's pajamas were dark green, and while the sight of a man in pajamas and leather gloves with his hair mussed might not be an image that would bring a thrill to your average girl, Rogue found it stirring.

She reached for him, wanting to slip her hand under his shirt to touch his bare back, instead running her fingers over the fabric. The cuff on that wrist pushed her hand away from him and she sighed. He still gave her little leeway in touching him. For a while she'd thought that might change as he came to trust her, but now she wasn't so sure.

And who knew if he trusted her anyway.

"Is Mystique gone?" she asked him quietly, memories of the previous night returning to disturb her.

He stretched, pulled off the gloves, and ran his bare fingers through his silver hair. As much as the sight of him in gloves excited her, she also had a fascination with the uncovered hands whose touch she so rarely and briefly felt. "I heard her get up and leave a couple of hours ago."

"I can't believe you were in bed this late." She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling, remembering the casual way that he had allowed Mystique to "assist" him in his use of her. "You leaving?"

He turned to regard her, and while his icy blue eyes were almost always serious, it was rare that his mouth was. "I thought I'd spend the day with you," he said slowly.

Rogue blinked and looked at him, her thoughts of his strange relationship with the metamorph temporarily forgotten. "Really? Do you have something planned?"

He paused. "Actually, I do not. I wondered if there was anything that you'd like to do."

"Oh." She stared at him. "Oh!"

He chuckled and rose from the bed.

"I mean, yes," she amended quickly. "I can think of lots of stuff to do. That sounds wonderful."

Magneto made his way downstairs, put on a pot of coffee, and began making toast. Rogue made her way to the bathroom and slipped into the shower, peeking her head out long enough to ask him to uncuff her so that she could shave her legs.

Freshly scrubbed, she sat down across the table from him and began to nibble, watching him reading the morning paper. She didn't have it delivered, so he must have gone out while she was in the shower to get it.

He turned a page and spoke without lowering the paper. "Have you decided what you'd like to do today?" He was turned away from her so that she could see him in profile... the formidable brow, the mouth made for wryness, the deep lines on his cheeks. The long, sleek muscles of his forearms were still defined, and while his hands showed some signs of his age, they were steady and sure.

"Rogue?"

She looked down, and out of the corner of her eye saw him arch a brow in her direction.

"I... I wondered if you might like to go over to the studio with me this morning. To, you know, see some of the things I've been working on."

"Mmm," he said absently. "That sounds fine. Anything else?"

"Well--" She trailed off, picking at her toast.

It was a long moment before he lowered his paper slightly and gave her an inquisitive look. For some reason, Rogue found that she couldn't bring herself to say much else.

He returned to his paper, obviously not inclined to probe about whatever was on her mind. After a few moments, Rogue got up and finished getting dressed, and he slipped into the bathroom for his own shower.

The morning was actually rather... pleasant, which was a strange adjective to describe time spent with Magneto. While Rogue still felt disturbed by the previous evening -- both by the way that Mystique and Magneto had treated her, and by some of the things Mystique had said -- she was flattered that Magneto actually seemed interested in her work at school and had even asked her questions about some of her pieces. He had not commented explicitly on how much metal she used in her sculpture, but she had noticed him casting her amused glances and she had smiled back shyly.

Lunch was a quiet affair in a secluded Italian cafe. Rogue caught him studying her once or twice when she had been looking away, but she didn't know what was on his mind any more than he apparently knew what was on hers. He often used her cuffs or her piercings to torment her, control her, or remind her of his dominion when they were in public, but today he didn't seem inclined.

As they finished eating, he dabbed fastidiously at his mouth and then neatly placed his napkin on the table by his plate. "So?" he said expectantly.

Rogue looked up at him, her fork hovering over the last bite of her food. "Uh... what?"

He crossed his arms, his blue eyes watching her thoughtfully. He said nothing else.

Rogue put down her fork, leaving the morsel untouched. For some reason she felt distinctly uneasy as she pulled her own napkin from her lap and placed it by her plate. It was funny... she had no idea what he was thinking about, no idea how he might have put the question that he was asking into words if he'd chosen to do so, yet she knew exactly what he wanted to know from her.

"I just... I don't understand what I am to you," she said slowly, looking at the remnants of their meal spread across the table instead of at him. "Mystique laughed at me... for referring to myself as, uh." Here she paused, regretting having started down this path. "Well, as your lover. She said I was just a toy." She twisted her napkin in her ungloved fingers, embarrassed at admitting to him how she had characterized their relationship, much less Mystique's dismissal of it. "You sure treat me like a toy."

He did not laugh, but Rogue couldn't quite bring herself to look up and see what expression was on his face. A long moment passed.

"If all you have been to me was a toy, has it been so bad?" he asked finally.

It wasn't any of the answers that she had either expected, hoped for, or feared. Her heart sank at its implications, but she was confused by him seeming to care about her answer. If all she was to him was a toy, then why would he care how that was for her?

Rogue finally glanced up at him, and his expression was both serious and interested. "You confuse me so much," she complained, hating how pathetic she sounded.

"Answer the question," he said, his voice low, but the underlying tone of command unmistakable.

Rogue tried to think about the question. Had it been so bad? Well, their entire affair had been confusing, unsettling, anxiety-provoking, and occasionally terrifying so far.

"Not... exactly... bad." She played with a strand of her hair. "But I don't know if it's exactly been good, either. I mean, isn't being with someone supposed to make you happy?"

He frowned. "Are you unhappy, Rogue?"

As usual, seeing him displeased evoked a feeling of intense discomfort, but Rogue wasn't willing to back down this time. She always did that, and as a result she'd never been brave enough to make this conversation happen.

She took a deep breath and looked him square in the eye. "Do you even know my real name?"

Magneto inclined his head, and she saw a gleam of something unpleasant in his gaze. "I know the name that your human parents gave you, if that's what you mean."

"That's my real name." She squared her jaw.

He sighed, and the sound was long-suffering. "You think that your real name is the one inflicted on you by inferior creatures who revoked their care and comfort from their own flesh and blood in her greatest hour of need, simply because they discovered that she was different from how they wanted her to be?"

His words brought the sting of tears to Rogue's eyes. "What they did wasn't right and I'll never forgive them for it," she said firmly. "But they loved me a lot when I was little, and I wouldn't be the person I am if not for them. I don't want to try to become someone else just because they wronged me at the end. I'm the same person I was for the first fifteen years of my life, if a little older now."

"Oh really? Then why did you feel compelled to choose a new name for yourself, my dear? Why did you do that same exact thing that the rest of us did when we were rejected by humanity? Even every one of the X-Men took a new name for himself, and they like to pretend that we'll be able to peacefully co-exist with the humans whose names we've all rejected. Even they can't escape the truth deep inside of themselves, whether they can bear to admit it to themselves or not, or they wouldn't have taken mutant names."

Both his voice and the coldly passionate conviction in his eyes were stirring, but Rogue valiantly refused to let him continue to distract her. "Why are we talking about this bullshit again? This isn't what we were talking about."

"We are talking about this, my dear, because you want me to call you by your foolish human name in order to prove to you that I in some way actually care about you."

"And you're picking a fight about philosophy rather than doin' it!" she snapped. "So should I take that as a sign that you _don't_ care?"

Magneto's gaze hardened, and he suddenly pushed his chair back and stood. Rogue was jerked gracelessly to her feet by her cuffs as her own chair yanked itself away from her. She squeaked and looked around in alarm.

"We'll finish discussing this at home," he snapped, nearly dragging her from the restaurant. Rogue did her best to coordinate her gait so that it wasn't obvious that she was being moved primarily by an external force, but she was sure that his angry demeanor and her awkwardness were making quite a scene.

They were within a short walk of Rogue's apartment, and within a few seconds he relinquished his hold enough that she was able to follow him without stumbling, though she still felt a distinct forward tug on the cuffs that she wore. His stride was long and she struggled to keep up.

The door of the elevator in her building opened as he approached, and the elevator rose without either of them selecting a floor, in an unerringly smooth motion that made Rogue's stomach feel queasy. They were clearly not being lifted by the cables.

The door slid aside and he nearly threw her down the hall. The door to her apartment swung open before she was anywhere near it, and then slammed hard behind him.

"What?" she yelled, as his hold on her cuffs relaxed and she stumbled to a halt in the middle of her kitchen. "I didn't know asking you if you cared about me was gonna piss you off this badly!"

"Do you honestly believe that I could ever _care_ about someone so stupid that she still can't pick the right side in this bloody fucking war?"

Rogue noted vaguely that she didn't think she'd ever heard him use profanity before even as his words drove into her gut with a sickening impact. She tried to back away from him, but he held her still with his power as he advanced on her and grabbed a handful of her hair.

"Erik," she said desperately, a pleading note coming into her voice, but then was startled into silence as she felt herself lifted into the air.

He was raising himself with her, evidently too impatient to deal with navigating the stairway. They both rose over the railing of the loft, then he threw her through the air and onto the bed as much by the hand tangled painfully in her hair as by her cuffs.

"Just shut up, Rogue," he told her, settling himself on his feet at the bottom of the bed. "I don't really want to hear your voice any more right now."

He had raised a hand toward the bedside table, and the drawer slid out, the collar that he had used on her in San Francisco and a few times since lifting itself out and fastening itself around Rogue's neck. He tended to use it when he was feeling particularly possessive, which often lead to him being particularly brutal with her. Rogue swallowed, wanting to wrap her fingers between the metal and her throat, but she was now being restrained fully spread-eagle on the bed.

"Erik," she tried again, catching his gaze so that he could see the worry in hers. "Let's just talk."

It was a foolish thing to do right after he'd told her not to speak. Of course the collar tightened to the point where she was gasping for air. He looked at her impassively as she struggled.

Magneto came forward onto the bed to kneel between her spread legs. He grabbed her top and stripped it off of her quickly, then followed suit with her jeans and underwear, aided by his direct control over her limbs.

His bare fingers repeatedly brushed over her skin as he stripped her, though evidently not long enough for the pull to start at any one contact.

She managed to find just enough air to force out one word. "Gloves!" she said in a strangled voice, worried that in his anger he was actually going to get injured again.

He paused with her bra in his hand, staring at her face. He dropped the garment on the floor and, eyes locked with hers, put both his bare hands on her upper thighs. "I don't need gloves, you fool," he said in a chilling voice.

Rogue braced well before the draw could start. Except... it didn't.

She stared, and he smiled at her malevolently. "Stunned, my dear?" He slid his hands down to her knees, and Rogue was astonished at the feeling of his skin against hers. It was so much warmer than leather... it was a sensation that simply couldn't be replicated with any amount of creativity, the intoxicating glide of skin against skin. He was touching her, and there was no pull, and he'd already known that he could do it.

The terrible pressure at her throat had eased slightly, but Rogue was too shocked to speak, and he laughed unpleasantly, running his hands back up her body to her breasts.

"You belong to me, Rogue, and I will not allow myself to be denied the use of a thing that belongs to me in any fashion that I wish." His eyes were blazing as he stared at her, and her head was swimming with disbelief at the thing that was happening to her even as her sensitized nerves assured her that it was happening. She was arching up hard into his touch, her body starved for the feel of his skin. His bare fingers pulled at her nipples, twisted her piercings, stroked the undersides of her breasts.

"God," she croaked. "Please."

He was touching her. She didn't know how, but he was touching her. No one had touched her for longer than a few seconds since her fateful first kiss as a shy adolescent girl almost four years before.

She had never felt bare fingers other than her own on her breasts, or between her legs. Or inside of her.

Never before now. She thought that she would fly apart beneath his touch. It was like orgasming endlessly. She didn't know how much she could take.

"Erik!"

He hit her then, hard, back of his hand connecting with a loud smack across her mouth. There was no taste of leather this time, but of his flesh.

"Sir," he corrected her coldly.

It was all too much. He'd slapped her before, but never struck her like that, not even the time he'd split her lip. Her ears rang, and there was searing, jarring pain all down the side of her face. She was overwhelmed by his touch, and then overwhelmed by it being used against her in violence. She twisted hard in her bonds.

"Let me go, you psychopath!" she screamed hoarsely, then had to suck in air past the collar that was still making it hard to breathe.

His fingers dug into the soft flesh under her jaw and he leaned forward and stared at her. "No," he said, and his voice was no longer angry, which in its way was so much scarier.

Then he kissed her, which he had never done again after the first night that he fucked her. His mouth was hard, demanding, and hers was already bruised from the back of his hand. She had no conscious awareness of her decision, but she returned his kiss hungrily, desperately, knowing only that she wasn't going to have to pull away because of the curse of her skin.

She kissed him and he kissed her and his fingers were buried in her sex, forcing her body open, stretching her, his other hand grasping hard at her throat, and there were dark flecks dancing in her vision.

"Let me go!" she gasped again under his mouth, and he was fumbling at his slacks and slipping inside of her and she was pressing up to meet him. His hands dug into her shoulders, into her breasts, his grip bruising but it couldn't have mattered less because he was ungloved as he did it.

He bit the side of her neck and she thrashed as his teeth actually tore her skin. Her hands would have been on him no matter how many times she had been reprimanded for it in the past if he wasn't somehow able to maintain the presence of mind to control her bonds even despite the urgency of their coupling.

He thrust violently into her while she writhed beneath him. After a moment he wrenched his mouth away from hers and pushed back and stared down at her, and through the haze of sensation and strangulation Rogue was able to see the terrible coldness in his eyes.

He struck her again and her head snapped to the side, tasting blood. "I will not put up with much more of this from you, Rogue," he near-panted as he continued to fuck her.

"Let me go!" she ground out a third time, then coughed.

" _No!_ " His hand connected with the side of her face again, and Rogue's vision began to narrow slightly, fuzzy around the edged. "You. Are. Mine. And you always will be!"

The collar was too tight, his blows were too hard, and Rogue had been through too much. "No," she heard a far off voice gasp, and she vaguely noticed how raw and pained that voice sounded just before she slid into unconsciousness.

 


	19. Chapter 19

Rogue awoke slowly, reluctantly becoming aware of how badly she ached.

She had been fuzzily conscious as Magneto finished with her, rolled off the bed and left the apartment, then she had lapsed into actual sleep, though it had been fitful. Now she opened her eyes, groggy and confused, and it took her a few seconds to realize that the apartment was dark because evening had fallen.

She forced herself to sit up with a groan. Her face, throat, and breasts hurt the worst. She raised a hand to her cheek gingerly and probed at it and was relieved that nothing felt broken.

After a long moment to gain her bearings, Rogue made her way slowly downstairs, drank a huge glass of water, and ventured into the bathroom.

The skin of her cheek was mottled and slightly swollen, especially beside her eye, and though the blood she had tasted was from a cut inside her lip, there was a bit of swelling visible there too. The fingermarks under her jaw were actually livid, and green shadows were visible on her breasts.

She looked like a battered woman, and thinking back on what happened, so had no idea if she really was one or not. Rough sex with Magneto was par for the course and that was clearly part of what was keeping her in the relationship. But this afternoon he'd been angry, punishing her.

She remembered pressing up to meet him, kissing him back desperately, even as she'd screamed at him to release her. Rogue felt sick. There was clearly something wrong with her.

She remembered his hands on her... somehow he'd known that he could touch her. She remembered him fucking her after he had her nipples pierced, and shaking off the vague impression she'd had that he hadn't slid a condom into place. She remembered the first day he'd made her come, pinned up against the wall of her tiny depressing studio, his inner forearm pressed against her lower belly as he rubbed her.

He'd been able to touch her from the very beginning, and he'd never told her. Not until he was so angry that he wanted a weapon to use against her.

He could touch her. Rogue felt a little bit dizzy again. She stumbled out of the bathroom and sank down into one of the chairs by her dining room table.

Long moments passed, Rogue staring blankly at the surface of the table. When she finally stirred, her eyes settled on the cell phone that Magneto had given her.

She picked it up with trembling hands, scrolled through the built-in phone book, and found a name. She had to concentrate in order to push the call button, and she raised the phone gingerly to her ear.

No answer. The phone's pre-programmed voicemail message played. Rogue had no idea if he would check voicemail. She waited for the beep.

"Logan? It's me... I mean, it's Rogue. Marie. It's Marie." She choked up for a moment... Logan had always called her Marie when they were alone together. "I, uh... I'm sorry, Logan. I think... I think that I need you. Can you come? I'm sorry."

Rogue carefully placed the phone back on the table, no idea if she should have just done what she'd done. Would Magneto be coming back? She had no way to know.

An hour and a half passed slowly, and for most of it she sat in the chair she was in. She was still naked, cuffed, and collared, and after a while she managed to find it in her to go back upstairs and pull on jeans and a high-necked sweater. She pulled some cold chicken and a soda out of the fridge, then sat back down at the table and picked at it absently and stared at the phone.

It rang. It was a blocked number. Magneto's name actually showed up when he called her on this phone, so it was either Logan or it was Magneto calling from some other location.

"Hello?"

"Where are you?" Logan's voice was hard, and Rogue felt tears spring to her eyes immediately.

She told him the address, well aware that Magneto would be livid if he ever found out.

"Can you stay there for an hour? Are you safe?"

"I... I think so," she choked out.

"Stay there unless you're in danger. If you have to run, run. I can find you." The phone went dead.

The only TV in the flat was in Magneto's office, and Rogue wasn't going to go in there, so she flipped through a magazine, seeing nothing on its pages. She could hear the clock on the wall ticking down the seconds. Her hand kept creeping up to her face to probe at her bruises as if of its own accord.

She started violently when someone tried to open the door. She had risen to go and let Logan in when his claws slammed through the locking mechanism with the unpleasant sound of rending metal, and the door swung open with a crash.

Well, Magneto would know who had been here.

The first thing that she noticed about him was that his eyes were black with fury and he was poised for combat. He scanned the apartment quickly, assessed that there were no immediate threats, then looked Rogue over for signs of injury within about two seconds. Rogue moved forward and threw herself at him; he retracted his claws instantly and hugged her back.

"C'mon," he said gruffly, pulling her out the door, and she went.

The night air was far less chilly than it had been the last time that she was on the back of Logan's bike. She reprimanded herself for forgetting to put on gloves -- her time with Magneto had made her careless -- but Logan was dressed in his customary layers regardless of the changing weather, so she wrapped her arms around his sides and clung to him as she slid into place behind him and he pulled away from the curb.

She didn't know where they were going and she didn't ask. She sat all the way forward, leaning against him, turning her helmeted head to rest against his strong back, and she cried silently as he took her away from New York.

They were outside of the city and had passed through several towns before he pulled into the parking lot of a twenty-four hour WalMart. Rogue slid off the seat and removed her helmet, and he leaned the bike onto its kickstand.

"You hungry, kid?" His mouth was still thin and his expression grim.

Rogue shook her head, wiping the dried tears from her face. "Not really."

"All right. You go get a backpack and some clean clothes and whatever soap and stuff you need, okay? We're not going back to the mansion right now, so get whatever you'll need for a few days."

Rogue obeyed him automatically. He stalked along behind her, casting suspicious looks at the few employees and other shoppers, who gave them both a wide berth.

 _Obeying orders, Rogue? You're obeying the wrong man. You know how I'm going to feel about this when I find out_ , said a cultured, dangerous voice in her ear.

 _Shut up._ She ignored him. She couldn't pay attention to him. Not now.

When she had filled a basket and headed back toward the counters, Logan took it from her and paid. It was probably a good idea, since she didn't have enough cash on her to cover this, and using the credit card that Magneto had given her probably wouldn't have been the smartest move.

Outside, they packed the things she'd bought into the backpack and Rogue slid it on, then they hit the road once more.

Several hours later, Rogue was nearly drifting off in her place pressed up against Logan's back, and she didn't even know what state they were in. He reached back and squeezed her knee, turning his head and saying, "We're almost there," over his shoulder.

 _Almost where?_ she wondered sleepily. Wherever they were, it was rural, and they passed through an incredibly small and dingy town and starting climbing up into the Appalachian foothills surrounding it.

"There" turned out to be a tiny cabin buried deep in the woods on a secluded hillside. There was a pick up truck parked out front, but the place itself appeared uninhabited as Logan opened the door and ushered her inside. Rogue noticed that the door had not been locked.

"I'm so tired," she said, hearing the exhaustion in her own voice as she dropped the backpack on the dusty, outdated couch.

"You need food and water and I wanna look at those bruises," he said brusquely. "Then you can sleep as long as you want."

She sat down and watched him blankly as he went to a cupboard. He returned with a couple of packaged breakfast bars and a bottle of unchilled water and put them in front of her, and Rogue unwrapped a bar and uncapped the water and started to eat.

Logan crouched beside her and looked at the side of her face, probing with his fingers as she had done to herself upon awakening. He was still wearing his riding gloves... the leather was no where near as soft and expensive as Magneto's gloves, and it was broken down slightly from wind and rain. And yet, they suited him much better. She shook off the comparison.

"Nothin's broken," she said around a mouthful of oats and fruit.

He grunted, pulling the high neck of her sweater away from her throat, and then froze.

Rogue looked at him from the corner of her eyes and swallowed her last bite. "I, uh, can't take it off," she said, well aware that it was the collar that had caused his reaction.

"I can," he said in an angry voice. "Get the shirt outta my way."

Watching him worriedly, Rogue pulled the sweater over her head. Her throat hurt badly enough that it was uncomfortable to eat, so she was pretty sure that the bruising under the collar would have come up a lot since she'd seen it earlier. His furious eyes raked over her torso as she bared it, and narrowed even further at the bruises visible around the edges of her bra; then he scoffed in disgust at the site of the cuffs on her wrists and upper arms.

He extended a single claw slowly, so that it made a creepy sliding sound as it pushed through his skin instead of the distinct _snikt_ that resulted when he popped them all at once. Rogue turned her head and tilted it away.

He slid the claw carefully under the collar, which was tight enough that the back of the blade pushed hard into the delicate skin of her throat. When he pulled forward the collar jerked against the back of her neck before it gave way, and Rogue coughed a little.

"Sorry," he grunted, then took one of her hands in his and repeated the same procedure with the cuffs that she wore. Rogue knew that she could slide the cuffs around her upper arms off with enough determination, but for some reason it seemed better just to sit and let Logan free her from her bonds, mangling the metal in the process.

After her wrist and arm cuffs had been cut free, he simply looked at her, and Rogue nodded and pushed herself out of the seat enough to slide her jeans over her hips and push them onto the floor.

He was unsurprised at this point by the remaining cuffs, and made short work of them. She had fewer bruises on the lower half of her body... just a few on her hips and inner thighs.

Logan sat back on his heels, still looking her over as she sat before him in her underwear, and Rogue felt uncomfortable with what she saw in his gaze. His eyes came back up to her face.

"I lied," he said. "You gotta take a shower before you go to sleep, too. I can't stand the smell of him on ya."

She nodded, tearing open the second energy bar instead of returning his look.

He left her to finish eating in peace, moving around the cabin and taking care of whatever he needed to in order to make it habitable, she assumed. Once she'd polished off the food and finished the water, she picked up the backpack and went into the bathroom and turned on the shower as hot as she could possibly stand it.

She stood under the soothing spray for a very long time, until the water began to cool. Scalding rivulets ran over her face and torso and limbs, and all Rogue could do was stand with her eyes shut and one hand on the tile wall, swaying slightly. Eventually she picked up the soap she had bought and a washcloth that she had found in the linen closet, and she scrubbed furiously over every inch of her body, not wanting Logan to be able to smell any hint of Magneto on her when she was done.

She shampooed the heavy sheaf of her hair, closing her eyes rather than see the fall of white in front as she rinsed it.

She stepped out and dried herself thoroughly, avoiding catching any glimpses of herself in the steam-covered mirror, not wanting to see any of the ways that he had marked her, not really wanting to see her naked body free of its cuffs, either. She pulled on a tank top and a pair of boxers and wrapped her hair in a towel, then peeked back out into the main room, where Logan sat at the table, smoking.

He didn't even turn to look at her. "Take the bed," he said in a curt voice.

Rogue didn't argue. The bed was made up with flannel sheets, which would have been intolerable at this time of year in the city, but which she found herself appreciating out here in the chill of the countryside. She lay down and thought to herself that maybe the room was lightening just a little bit from the sun rising outside, but didn't even have time to decide whether that was really true or not before she tumbled headfirst into a deep, troubled sleep.

 


	20. Chapter 20

Rogue smelled bacon.

It took her a moment to place her surroundings when she came to again. The light streaming in the dirty window was startlingly bright, and the flannel sheets against her limbs were unfamiliar.

A cabin. In the woods somewhere. With Logan. She'd run away from New York, away from Magneto.

Oh.

Rogue sat up slowly and looked around, wondering whose cabin this was. It was completely furnished, so she thought that it wasn't Logan's, but clearly no one had been here in a while. She remembered the truck parked out front.

Food. Food smelled good. But food meant going back out into the main room and facing Logan. And facing Logan meant answering questions. And answering questions meant thinking about how she'd gotten here.

She thought briefly about staying in the bedroom, but couldn't really imagine a resolution to that scenario that wasn't even more uncomfortable. She stood up and squared her shoulders and marched out of the bedroom.

Logan was standing over the stove, clad only in his undershirt and jeans, hair in its characteristic wild disarray.

"Thought this might get ya up," he said without looking up.

Rogue padded silently to the table and sat down, yawning. After a few minutes Logan slid a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon and home fries in front of her.

"We got any ketchup?" Rogue asked, picking up her fork.

He made a noise of disgust, which she took for a no.

A moment later he sat down across from her with his own plate and began to eat. The meal passed in a tense silence that Rogue tried not to notice. As soon as she finished her last bite, he picked up her plate and deposited all the dirty dishes in the sink, running some water over them.

She looked at the lines of his back at the counter. He was fuming. _Fuming._

"Logan?" Her voice was gentle.

He grunted.

"Logan, I'm sorry." Rogue was determined not to cry, but she couldn't keep the emotion out of her voice.

He paused, then shut off the water and turned around, crossing his arms over his chest. It was a sight that had caused Rogue's breath to catch in her throat many times in the past. Today she didn't seem able to feel anything other than bone-deep misery.

"So, was it just the sex? `Cause the sex doesn't look so great from here. Or did you actually believe in his little cause?"

It sounded _terrible_ when he said it like that. Rogue refused to look away.

"Some of both, I guess," she said, acknowledging out loud for the first time that, as time had gone by, she had found herself feeling more and more frustrated over the fact that Magneto seemed to be the only one trying to do anything about the hostile, dangerous world that mutants were forced to live in. While she hated what he was doing, there were days when she wondered if perhaps he was admirable just for his willingness to do anything at all. "It started out with just the sex. And then, I don't know. Everything just seemed so far beyond my control."

_Which is what you wanted, my dear._ Rogue shook her head.

"But Logan, I never ever joined the Brotherhood, or whatever it is that you're thinking. I was never a part of the things that they do."

He stared at her. "I mighta had more respect for that than for you letting him fuck you," he said crudely, and Rogue winced. "I didn't always agree with Chuck and the X-Men, and if not for Magneto strapping helpless little girls into killing machines instead of doing it himself, I mighta sided with the Brotherhood instead of the X-Men myself. I mighta respected a change in principles more than I can respect you lettin' yourself be beaten down by a man who you don't believe in just because he gets your panties wet, Rogue."

She was _not_ going to cry, no matter how awful he was about it. She deserved whatever he wanted to say to her. She met his eyes.

"He never abused me," she said evenly. "He was rough with me and he knew that was the way that I wanted it."

Logan scoffed. "Then why the hell did I just rescue you, darlin'?" His hands were on the edge of the counter behind him now, his knuckles white from the force of his grip.

Rogue dropped her gaze. "It went too far at the end," she said, trying to ignore her own doubts about whether it had really gone too far or whether she had foolishly panicked like a little girl and screwed up something that she still very badly wanted.

Logan shook his head in disgust. "You tried to tell me that it wasn't so different from... from the way that I am. But I ain't never given a woman a shiner like the one that you got, no matter how carried away I got. And I've never strangled a girl, either."

Rogue flushed, suddenly having an unwelcome flashback to the indescribable rush of being with a man so ruthless and powerful that he could deny her the very air that kept her alive. Those had been the most intense orgasms of her life. There was no way to explain that.

He seemed to in some way notice her fleeting reverie, as his scowl deepened. Rogue looked up at him, and suddenly was struck by something very unexpected.

Was the bulge in his jeans more pronounced than usual?

She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head, and Logan shifted in turn, not seeming to like the shift in her demeanor.

"You've left bruises though, haven't you?" she asked suddenly, and the tone of her voice had changed. She was challenging him now.

Logan shrugged minutely, eyeing her. "I got a strong grip, but I don't hit girls when I'm screwin' `em."

"Really?" she said provocatively, getting to her feet and moving slowly toward him. "You ain't never been with a girl who really needed a good spanking?"

He stiffened as she drew closer. "I don't think you were playin' naughty schoolgirl when he split your lip open."

Rogue glided toe-to-toe with him so that he was between her and the counter. If she hadn't been so much smaller than him, he would have been trapped, but as it was he could move her easily.

"No," she drawled, "you're right, I wasn't." His hands were still braced on the counter, and she slid one of her own over the light cotton stretched across the muscles of his chest. "But some kinds of men like to fight and to fuck, and I don't think you can say that you've never had the urge to pop the claws right before you blew your load in some bimbo, can you?"

She didn't know exactly where this boldness was coming from, but it was better than defending her bizarre relationship with Magneto. He was fixing her with a warning glare, but Rogue thought that she saw something else flash there for just a moment as her hand moved across the broad expanse of his chest. She had never dared to touch him like this before, but he wasn't stopping her. "You don't have gloves on, darlin'. You don't like to touch anyone when you don't have gloves on."

She smiled. "Maybe I don't mind so much anymore. And you're changin' the subject."

"What are you doin', Marie?" His voice had dropped half an octave.

She ran her hand down his side and across his waist, trailing a finger along his belt. "I'm provoking you, Logan. And it's workin'."

"Why?" he said. He was standing stock still beneath her touch, not even a muscle twitching. "You tryin' to get a black eye on the other side? Is that what you want?"

She slid her hand over his belt and down his thigh, her thumb trailing very near to the bulge at his crotch. "How come the idea seems to be givin' _you_ a hard on, sugar?"

His hand came up suddenly and pushed her away from him, hard, in the center of her chest, so he was protected by the silky cloth of her tank top. Rogue stumbled, breathing fast and light, then righted herself and glared at him.

"Go outside and cool off, kid," he snarled angrily. "`Cause that ain't gonna work on me. Jesus."

She crossed her arms defiantly. "Don't try to give me orders, Logan. I've had enough of that."

He raked a hand through his hair. "Dammit, Rogue, then do whatever you want! Just do it away from me for a few minutes!"

"If you don't want to be around me, then why don't you go outside?" She knew her tone was petulant, but at least now she wasn't the only one who was miserably unhappy.

He gave her a sharp look, then stalked over to the door and wrenched it open, leaving her standing in the kitchen with a sink full of dirty dishes.

* * *

Rogue and Logan spent the rest of the day avoiding each other. It had been after noon by the time she got up, and she found herself taking a long walk through the woods that she didn't return from until the sun was starting to sink toward the horizon again. She found the ingredients for spaghetti with jarred marinara in the cabinets, so she threw some dinner together and left more than enough for him in a bowl while she cleaned the rest of the dishes.

There was a half-empty bottle of whiskey on the counter that she was pretty sure hadn't been there when she got up, so she found herself a shot glass and took it out on the patio, where she propped up her feet and watched the fireflies come out in the summertime dusk.

She truly had no idea what she was doing, nor what she ought to do next. Was Magneto going to come after her? If he was feeling violent, stopping him was well-nigh impossible. If he was feeling persuasive, she didn't know if she could resist him.

Especially not now, when he could lure her with touch.

What if he didn't come after her? She had no home without him. Should she go back to the mansion? She knew that she didn't fit in there anymore. Should she try to find out what this thing with Logan was? The attraction there was undeniable.

But he couldn't touch her. And more than that, even if he could, he would never touch her quite the way that Magneto would.

She wished that her memory of their last encounter wasn't so jumbled with fear and adrenaline. It was the only time she'd ever really been touched in her adult life, the only time that's she'd been touched intimately, and it was lost in a haze of confusion and alarm.

But no matter where else her mind went, it kept coming back to the fact that he could touch her, and that he had known all along and waiting until a moment like THAT to reveal it.

Logan sat down beside her, filled her glass with another shot of whiskey, and knocked it back himself.

"Do you think it'd be safe for me to go back to the mansion even if I wanted to?" Rogue asked quietly, looking at her toes in the twilight. Her voice was very slightly slurred, her southern drawl slightly more pronounced from the alcohol.

He took a slow pull on his cigar. "You think he's gonna come lookin' for you?"

She sighed. "He might." She wiggled her toes.

"Huh." He thought about that for a moment. "Well, if he does, I don't see much way to protect ya other than to keep you hidden where he can't find ya. Because much as I hate the guy, I gotta admit that there ain't much way to stop him if he's got his mind fixed on something."

Rogue just picked up the bottle and took a mouthful of whiskey straight from it. It burned going down, and for whatever reason the sensation was good right now.

"But then, you're not really sure that you don't want him to find ya," Logan added slowly.

Rogue's cheeks burned with shame. "I know that all you see is that he's hurt me, and you ain't ever gonna get any further than that, Logan. But whether you get it or not... I--I've got something with him. I know it doesn't make sense. But it's real. I just... I want to be with him, and though I don't really know why, he seems to want to be with me."

He made a derisive noise. "If you go back, he's gonna wind up killin' you, Marie." He was looking away from her, his face cast in shadows now that the sun was down, its rugged planes backlight from the lamp in the living room behind them. "And if that happens, I am going to find a way to kill him. Really, really slowly."

Rogue shuddered at the dark tone in his voice. Magneto may be a psychopath and a terrorist who didn't care about human life, but the man beside her now truly was a killer in his deepest nature, and she wondered how it was that a shy girl from Meridian had ever come to be caught between two such deadly men.

* * *

Afterwards, she guessed that part of where he went wrong was simply in assuming that they couldn't be found in their present location.

He'd gone inside before her, leaving her to the whiskey and her thoughts. And if Mystique and Pyro hadn't gotten to Rogue before Wolverine got to them, then their chances of taking them both in would have been much more hotly contested. But as it was, Rogue was drowsy and half-drunk and hardly realized what was happening by the time that Mystique slipped over the railing of the patio and had her pinned to the ground, face-down.

It seemed that Logan was outside within half a second, and Rogue was just starting to struggle when she glanced up and saw him engulfed in a searing firestorm even as he burst through the sliding glass door.

"Freeze or I'll stab her," Mystique snapped quickly, and Rogue felt the point of a knife digging into the side of her throat. She stilled, head swimming, knowing that she couldn't do much to defend herself in her present state and that Logan's hands were tied unless he was willing to see her hurt.

"You can't kill her," Logan snarled hatefully, his voice reflecting the pain of his burns even as his healing factor kicked in to heal them almost instantly. "Magnethead would gut you for it."

"You're right," the metamorph admitted, holding Rogue's arm painfully as she sat astride her back. "But I have explicit permission to torture her, and you're gonna hear her scream if you don't stand down right now."

There was a long, tense pause, then Rogue heard the distinctive reverse *snikt* of Wolverine sheathing his claws.

"Good choice, asshole," she heard Pyro say from a few feet away.

"Pyro, shut up," Mystique said curtly, slapping a pair of handcuffs onto Rogue and hauling her to her feet. "Get him into the shackles."

Rogue's head stopped spinning in time to see Pyro move behind Logan and shackle the feral mutant's hands behind him. Obviously they had come prepared, because the bonds that they used on Logan were nothing like the standard handcuffs that Mystique had put on Rogue.

Mystique pulled Rogue far away from Pyro and Wolverine and began leading her away from the cabin. The other two followed a good distance behind, and Rogue slowly figured out that it was so that Logan would be sure that Mystique would have plenty of time to hurt her before he could put the metamorph out of commission.

"Why are you bringing him too?" she asked blearily, tripping on the gravel road that she was being pushed along.

"Because that's what Magneto wanted," Mystique responded with her strange hollowness.

She heard Wolverine and Pyro exchange some heated words behind them, but they were too far for Rogue to hear what was being said.

She traipsed along morosely, berating herself for getting Logan involved in the whole affair. It seemed like they must have walked miles up the secluded road before her escort spoke again.

"You made a really shitty choice, Rogue. I don't think I've seen Erik this upset in many years."

Rogue blinked. Mystique's voice sounded almost... concerned? She decided to try responding in kind, even if she was being abducted by the woman at the moment. "I just didn't know what else to do," she said honestly. "He scares me so much."

It was hard to see Mystique in the darkness, but it seemed to Rogue that she nodded thoughtfully. "I tried to reason with him, but I'm afraid that due to our past I'm not someone he's likely to take advice from in... matters like these. Our friendship may have survived the cure, but I doubt we will ever trust one another with our hearts again."

It was strange to hear someone that Rogue had thought of as an enemy for so long refer to her heart in such a sentimental way, especially someone as cold as Mystique. Her mouth was dry with fear of what lay ahead for herself, but even more in fear for Logan, who shouldn't even have been involved.

"Why do you think he wants Logan?" she asked, not even trying to hide the tremor in her voice, hoping that Mystique would feel some kind of compassion.

But when the metamorph spoke, her voice was harder than before. "Don't let Magneto see how afraid you are for Wolverine, Rogue. That won't improve the situation."

Suddenly Rogue realized that Mystique was assuming that Rogue had run from Magneto in order to be with Logan. Which was certainly what Magneto was assuming too.

"Logan and I don't have a thing," she said urgently, and Mystique grabbed her upper arm as she stumbled again, on a root this time. "Logan was just helping me out of friendship."

The older mutant ignored that, and Rogue felt a creeping sense of despair. This was not good, was not good at all. If Magneto thought that she and Wolverine had... if he thought that they...

_Oh no._

"Why'd we have to land so fucking far away?" Pyro complained loudly from behind them, and Mystique made an exasperated noise.

"Because the man that you're walking beside has the senses of a bloodhound and could have eviscerated you a hundred times over by now if we didn't have a hostage that he cares about," Mystique shot back, her voice much lower than Pyro's but pitched to carry through the darkness.

_And the man that you're taking us to see has the power of a whole army at his whim and believes that I've betrayed him even more horribly than I have_ , Rogue thought, her whole body feeling chilled and feverish with terror at the same time.


	21. Chapter 21

Rogue had never been in a helicopter before, but wasn't in much of a state to decide whether she liked it or not. She just felt vaguely queasy.

Mystique was ensconced in the pilot's seat, while Rogue and Logan were restrained at opposite ends of the passenger chamber with Pyro seated languidly between them, his feet propped up on the seat across from him. Evidently he had not rid himself of the habit of playing with his favorite lighter even now that he'd rigged the wrist harness he wore, and Rogue was reminded of how annoying his constant _click... clack_ had always been, even when they were kids together at the mansion.

"John--" she said, then paused when he just glared at her. "Pyro."

"I've got no sympathy, Rogue, so don't bother," he sneered. "You crossed the wrong dude and you should have known it."

"I didn't cross him!" she protested. "I just needed some time to think. Logan and I are just friends."

Pyro shook his head. "Yeah, right, whatever. Good luck with that tactic."

Rogue could have screamed in frustration. "It's not a tactic! It's the truth."

A few moments passed in silence other than the repetitive clack of Pyro's lighter. Rogue looked desperately at Logan, but his face was completely shuttered. She had no idea if he was angry at her for getting him kidnapped.

"You know," Pyro said finally, "I can't believe you really were shtupping the boss. I mean, that was the rumor, of course, but I figured it was just a rumor. But no. Turns out even the most dangerous man in the world can get made a fool of by a pretty girl who's willing to spread her legs."

"Pyro." Mystique's voice carried back with a warning note, and Pyro paused. Evidently speaking ill of "the boss" in front of others was frowned upon within the Brotherhood.

"I'm just saying," he continued. "This isn't a real mission. I can't believe we had to come out here for this."

Rogue shifted on the hard seat, thinking worriedly of what she could say to Magneto to convince him to let Logan go and deal with her. The problem was that as she considered each argument in her mind, it sounded very much like it would only confirm Magneto's perception of her relationship with Logan, which wasn't actually going to have the desired effect.

"Pyro... you don't think he'll actually hurt us, do you?" Rogue asked suddenly. "I mean, hurt maybe, but not like... _hurt_ us?"

Her former schoolmate looked right at her, and Rogue thought that she saw a fleeting look of regret in his eyes. "I don't know, Rogue. Frankly, I'm kinda hoping he doesn't kill you."

* * *

 

They were in the air for several hours, and for the last hour there were no longer lights on the ground beneath them, leaving Rogue to think that they were over water. It also got much chillier, and Pyro dug a coat out from under his seat and shrugged it on. It was about twenty minutes later that he seemed to get tired of watching Rogue shiver, and he pulled a blanket out from the same compartment and threw it over her.

Logan wasn't shivering.

Mystique landed the helicopter with a light, expert touch. Pyro pulled her out by the arm, and Rogue sputtered as wet, salty air assailed her as soon as the door was open.

Rogue could discern little about their surroundings in the gloom, though the helipad itself was well lit. She could hear waves crashing far below them, and an edifice jutted up into the darkness to the right of the helicopter. It was in that direction that Pyro pushed her, through a large metal door that reflected the harsh artificial light in an unwelcoming fashion.

"Welcome to Lanthanide Cove," he said grimly.

Mystique moved forward to escort Rogue, gesturing her younger colleague back to accompany Wolverine instead. The gleaming walls of the corridors gave way in many places to unfinished rock, and it was clear that Magneto had hewn his base of operations from the heart of a formidable stone cliff-face over the sea. It was sterile and cool, causing Rogue to shudder as she was lead downward, downward through unmarked halls and narrow staircases.

They must have descended the equivalent of five or six stories when they got to a level that seemed to be occupied by holding cells. Rogue peered through the bars into the nearest dank chamber... the entire interior was hewn from the rock itself, with a hard platform for a bunk on one wall and a latrine opposite it. There was a circular barred window to the night air outside.

Rogue looked over at Logan, who had remained silent and stonily unexpressive since the moment he had yielded to their captors at the cabin. Mystique unbolted the small door and gestured them both inside.

Pyro strode away without a backward look once the door was bolted behind the two prisoners. Mystique paused on the other side of the bars, her unnatural yellow eyes studying them briefly. "It'd be best if you just admitted your betrayal and begged for his mercy without fighting him," she said suddenly, and it wasn't clear if her comment was directed at Rogue or at both of them, as her gaze moved from Rogue to Logan as she spoke.

"There's nothin' to admit," Logan grunted, and Mystique simply shrugged her slim, elegant shoulders and padded away.

Rogue didn't know what to say or do. She would have wrapped her arms around her against the chill, but her hands were still cuffed behind her, as were Logan's. She was with Logan! Surely this cell couldn't hold him. She turned to her companion with a flicker of hope in her eyes.

"Here," he said, and he turned away from her, popping a single claw on his right hand and cocking his wrist so that it was level with the floor. "I can't see behind me so you're gonna have to drag the handcuffs over the edge instead of the other way around."

Rogue did as he suggested, and though it took a couple of tries for her to find enough leverage to apply the necessary force herself, it turned out to be possible, and in a few seconds the separated cuffs hung from each of her wrists.

"Can you break those cuffs?" she asked in a low voice, referring to the much heavier ones on his wrists.

Logan's face tightened and his shoulder muscles bunched as he tried two or three times. "I don't think so. I could bust `em if I could get the claws on `em, or maybe if they were in front of me." He moved into the center of the room and stretched his arms out behind him for a moment, then went through an awkward series of contortions to step through the barrier of his cuffed arms so that they were indeed in front of him.

Rogue watched hopefully as he took a moment to regain his balance and take a few deep breaths, then applied his considerable strength to trying to break through the cuffs now that he could pull with his most developed muscles. Unfortunately, the attempt was unsuccessful.

"Figures," he said in an irritated voice. "Probably reinforced with something a lot stronger than what the cops use. Why not, when you can do it without any tools?"

Rogue looked around the chilly cell. If she didn't keep moving, keep thinking, she was worried that she might cry, and that wasn't going to help the situation or improve Logan's opinion of her competency at all. Well, at least Logan could semi-properly use his claws now that they were in front of him, which could be enough to get them out of there even if he was still cuffed, right?

"Well, your claws can cut through anything, even if your muscles can't break it, right?" she said firmly. "Can you cut those bars?"

"That would be the next thing to try, yeah," he agreed, moving toward the bars of the cell.

"Unfortunately for you, I'm not going to give you the opportunity to find out," carried a cold but compellingly nuanced voice from the hallway beyond, and Magneto strode into view.

Rogue's stomach turned over in response to the now-familiar tones of the man who had both victimized and charmed her, who had terrorized and moved her, who had frightened and aroused her more than any other man ever had. She turned her eyes to take him in again, and felt her insides freeze as she noted both that his expression was utterly, completely impassive, and that he was wearing his full military uniform.

It was a sight that she had not witnessed in person since Liberty Island, and she remembered all too well that his intention that night had, indeed, been to kill her.

 


	22. Chapter 22

"Erik..." She said his name slowly, carefully, hoping to see a flicker of... something, _anything_ in his glacial blue eyes. There was a clenching sensation in her chest, much of which was easily identifiable as fear... but Rogue could not tell herself that fear was all it was.

She had wanted to see him again. Not like this, no, but ever since she had left that apartment, she had been wrestling with a rising awareness that the idea of never seeing him again felt... intolerable. Wrong. Heinous.

"Good evening, Rogue," he replied, almost sounding polite, and there was no flicker of anything in his gaze. "And Wolverine."

He held up one hand and the bars of the cell parted themselves so that he could easily step through.  Rogue glanced at Wolverine, who was trembling in place, and realized that Magneto was controlling him.

In spite of the fact that so much of her felt pulled toward him, she took a step away from the presence of the older mutant, and his mouth twisted wryly. "Ah. So you do realize how unpleasant this situation has become."

 _Unpleasant_? The mildness of his choice of words unnerved her further. Mystique had said she hadn't seen him this upset in years. Shouldn't he describe the situation as something worse than _unpleasant_?

"Erik," she said in the calmest voice she could muster. "I think that you and I should talk. Alone. Please."

"Should we? And what are you going to say to me, my dear?" He actually moved toward Logan as he spoke, and raised one gloved hand to rest on Logan's frozen shoulder. "Are you hoping to explain to me that nothing happened between you and the man that you have desired more than any other for all these years? That he took you to a secluded cabin in the woods merely to play big brother to you?" Logan's teeth were visibly gritted as he shook beneath Magneto's casual touch. "Even if I believed that, Rogue, do you think that it would make everything /all right/?"

Rogue's heart ached at witnessing how distressing it was for Logan to endure Magneto's touch and be helpless to pull away, but she knew that trying to intervene was only going to worsen the situation.  She needed to find a way to free Logan from the tangled mess of her life, and beyond that... well, she didn't know, but she knew that she couldn't imagine a way out of this room for herself that left her free of the man who had insidiously found a way to run through her veins like the very iron in her own blood.

"Get... hands... off me..." Logan managed to force out from behind his immobile jaw. His face was a mask of fury.

"Oh, my boy," Magneto responded, lifting his gloved hand and running a finger over Wolverine's cheek in a gesture that seemed perversely tender, making Rogue feel slightly sick and strangely, inexplicably jealous. "We both know that you're in every way helpless right now. Why make it worse with empty demands and threats?  It'll be so much easier if you just surrender to what's happening."

Rogue knew, she _knew_ it wouldn't help, but she couldn't keep herself from blurting, "Erik! Please leave him alone!" It was like she was fifteen years old and watching Magneto torture her hero in that damned railroad car all over again, except that then she had had no name for the merciless psychopath with whom she was pleading.

And then he had not held her in his thrall.

She could only see Magneto in profile as he stood mostly facing Logan, but she saw him turn his face slightly in her direction. "Now, Rogue, are you sure that you wish to be addressing me in so familiar a manner at this delicate juncture in our relationship?"

Rogue swallowed hard. She didn't want to call him sir in front of Logan, but right now her dignity was far less important than appeasing the man who held both their fates in his hands, of finding some way to salvage the remains of the tenuous connection that had, however unlikely, formed between them. "I'm sorry... sir." She strove to sound genuinely contrite.

Magneto circled Logan until he was behind the shorter mutant, his hand trailing along Logan's arm and torso as he did. He looked calmly at Rogue from over Logan's shoulder, and the juxtaposition of the faces of the two men who had most affected her in life -- one cool and aloof, one tortured and enraged -- made bile rise in the back of her throat at the same time that terrible longing sang in her heart.

"Is this who you want, Rogue?" he asked her evenly, both his hands now resting lightly on Logan's shoulders. "This... unmannered brute? You would rather leave with him than stay with me?"

She stood still where she was, eyeing him fearfully. She could see Logan's temper boil even hotter at being accused of brutishness by the man who had left Rogue with a black eye. "No, he's just my friend. Who I _want_ is you. I am just so afraid of you. I didn't run to be with him."

Magneto's hand tightened visibly on Logan's shoulders. "I don't think so," he said, in a mock thoughtful voice. "If that were true, you would have gone back to the school."

She didn't know what to say to that. He was, quite simply, wrong, but he had all of the control and she had none.

"No response, my dear? Well, let's see what it is that you chose over me. Come here."

She still didn't move, afraid of his intentions. Logan was clearly continuing to fruitlessly strain against Magneto's control.

"No? Well, as you seem to have discarded the cuffs that marked my ownership of you as if they were so much scrap metal, I suppose that I shall have to have the Wolverine come to you, then."

Logan's movement was stiff and awkward as Magneto moved him forward like a puppet. Rogue could not help but back away in horror, though it was not horror of Logan, but of what was being done to him. The look of anguish in his hazel eyes was terrible to see, as was the tightness of his jaw.

"No!" Logan ground out. "No!"

Magneto moved around them both and behind Rogue, catching her by the upper arms and stilling her backward progress. She shuddered at the touch of his gloved hands, well aware that he didn't need the protection.

Logan was reaching for her, his hand shaking from the force of his resistance, his eyes full of hate. She cringed back into Magneto as Logan's fingers slowly wrapped into the fabric of her tank top, then ripped it away from her with a violent jerk that left abrasions on her shoulders and sides. She was embarrassed for Logan to see the metal rings piercing her exposed nipples, knowing that he would understand right away why they were there.

Oh god, what was Magneto planning to do with them? "Please, sir, don't do this," she begged openly, caught between the two men with nowhere to go, both vulnerable and dangerous in her nudity.

"Oh, but I can give you what you so clearly want," Magneto whispered in her ear, and his hands released her arms briefly as he stripped away his gloves. She wanted to move away, but Logan was standing too close to her and his hands and arms were uncovered, and she was bare except for an oversized pair of boxers, making her fearful of hurting him with her skin. She could feel Magneto's solid height behind her, the scratchy wool of his uniform against the skin of her back.

His bare hands settled back on her arms with the lightest of pressure. "I can let him touch you, my dear," he said softly, and indeed Logan's hand was forced forward to settle on Rogue's breast. She could not help but to look at Logan's face, but although Magneto could prevent the feral mutant from turning his head, he could not keep him from closing his eyes tightly.

There was no draw, and Logan's calloused palm moved over her pierced nipple in a mechanical motion. Rogue whimpered. "Please, Magneto." She was on the verge of tears. "You don't want to do this to us."

He brushed her thick hair aside and nuzzled at the back of her neck. "On the contrary, my dear, nothing is more important than your happiness. If you were willing to risk both of your lives to be together, then I would be a monster to try to keep you apart."

Logan's other hand joined his first on Rogue's other breast, and they kneaded her flesh in a slow, unnatural motion. He seemed to force himself to open his eyes, to look down into her tear-filled ones.

She saw the loathing and disgust there, and she tried to show him compassion and forgiveness. She knew that what Magneto was doing to Logan -- what he was forcing Logan to do -- would wound him in a way that no physical assault ever could, and she was filled with horrible shame for being the cause of it... and, even more, for continuing to want to find a way to end it that would not lose Magneto to her forever.

"I'm so sorry," she said softly, and whether she was apologizing to Logan or to Magneto didn't seem to matter much anymore.

Her body was responding to the crude touch, and Magneto caused Logan's trembling fingers to tug at Rogue's turgid flesh, to take a hold of the rings and twist them. Magneto's control was becoming more deft, as if he were trying Logan's body on for size and was getting used to it with a little practice. Rogue still had no idea how it was that Magneto was able to touch her, and under other circumstances would have been rapturous to know that he could extend that boon to others, but here in this room it just seemed like an impossibly cruel joke.

Rogue's bare hands had come forward of their own accord to grasp Logan's angular, denim-clad hips, as there seemed to be nowhere else for them to go. The tableau that the two of them made was like a mockery of Rogue's girlhood fantasies.

"What else would you like of your adoring suitor, my dear?" Magneto murmured in her ear. "Do you want him to kiss you? To fuck you? You've been an amusing enough plaything for me that I might be inclined to indulge your whims, and as none of us knows how this climactic evening is going to play out, perhaps you ought to take your pleasures with your beloved as you can..."

Rogue turned her head sharply away, sickened by the idea of Magneto forcing Logan to kiss her, which of course meant that her cheek was pressed against Magneto's chest. "There's nothing I can say to convince you," she ground out hopelessly. "I may love Logan, but he's not my beloved."

Suddenly Logan fell to his knees before Rogue like a marionette whose strings had been cut, his right hand dropping to her waist as his mouth fastened onto her breast. His left hand continued to grip her other breast, but the force of his suckling combined with the scraping of his teeth over both flesh and metal was so painful that she barely noticed the other stimulation.

"Gah!" she cried loudly, trying to twist away, but Magneto's fingers dug into her arms as he held her firmly against his length.

"Aren't you enjoying this, little girl?" Magneto hissed unpleasantly. "I suppose you should have thought of that before you left with him, shouldn't you?"

Logan's mouth moved across her breasts, leaving a wide, wet trail as he searched for and found her other nipple. Both of his large hands were fastened on Rogue's waist now, and it was Magneto's more slender hand that tugged brutally at the wet, aching nipple that Logan had just moved away from.

"You may have thoughtlessly discarded my cuffs, but I can feel that the rings that ensure your chastity are still intact," Magneto mused, his hands wrapped around her breasts as if he were offering them for Logan's attention. Logan was biting hard enough to abrade skin now, and Rogue cried, her hands pushing ineffectually at his broad shoulders. Logan's fingers tangled in the fabric at the side of her boxers and jerked them downward, exposing the rest of Rogue's body. "I suppose you just hadn't gotten around to them yet, as I must admit that Wolverine's adamantium could have made short work of them. But I would have been disappointed to see you freed from my dominion without some fitting sacrifice, so I think that we'll remove them my way instead before you consummate your union."

Logan's fingers thrust between Rogue's leg, slipped into the front most ring that held her labia together, and ripped it out of her body.

Rogue felt an inhuman shriek torn from her throat as her entire body flailed in unexpected agony. Her convulsion was too violent for Magneto to hold her entirely still, and Logan's mouth lost its hold on her nipple. Rogue felt blood trickle down her thighs, and the ripped, burning flesh between her legs throbbed in a way that she'd never even imagined.

"Shhh," Magneto told her mock-soothingly. "Two more, my dear."

There was no way that Rogue could do anything other than panic at the prospect of Logan being forced to rip out the other rings, completely regardless of how fruitless her struggles were bound to be. Magneto wrapped one of his arms fully around her throat, the other under her breasts, and pinned her between his body and Logan's so tightly that Logan's mouth was able to find her quivering breast again. Rogue kicked wildly, but once again Logan's hand found its way between her thighs and gripped the second ring in her labia.

Rogue was screaming again even before he ripped it free, and Magneto chuckled darkly in her ear, his face pressed against the side of hers. Logan's hand was back at her bloody sex immediately, and somehow he unerringly found and tore free the third ring before she'd had time to draw a single breath after her shriek from the second one.

Rogue's feet and knees were driving into Logan repeatedly, her hands batting at his shoulders and face, but his heavy frame barely budged in response, and his expression was hidden as his mouth persisted in finding and sucking at her aching nipples. Rogue had only twice before experienced pain like this: once when strapped into Magneto's machine, which had not faded until her consciousness had, and then again when he'd had her nipples pierced, though the worst of that had abated within seconds of each of the needles passing through her flesh.

This pain had flared as Logan ripped each ring free, but was still agonizing in the aftermath of its infliction, seeming not to abate in any meaningful way. Her thighs were sticky with blood, and looking down she could see its red stain on Logan's right hand, a sight which just served to renew her panic.

"That was certainly some lovely foreplay," Magneto murmured, and now he was drawing her back, away from Logan, who was left kneeling in the middle of the floor, his chin covered in spit and his hand in blood, his eyes wild. "But I think you're both ready now to take things to the next level in your relationship."

It was impossible that his voice was still so calm, so cold, after what he'd just done, and even more impossible that Rogue was finding herself gripped by a fierce, sick longing for him to put an end to this and take her into his arms and hold her while she sobbed. Her eyes flew to Logan, to poor victimized Logan, and she wanted more than anything for him to magically be whisked away so that Magneto could finish what he'd started with her and she could somehow find a way to make things go back to the way they'd been before she'd run.

She was insane. The events of the last ten minutes should have convinced her that death would be better than belonging to this madman.

Magneto shoved her forward onto the platform of the bunk, and her knees felt the hardness of the rock through the thin padding of the mattress. She simply lay where she fell, sobbing freely, not even trying to scramble away as he stepped back from her.

"Get on your hands and knees," he commanded.

Rogue failed to respond in any way, and he crouched down before her and tangled his hand in her hair, turning her snot-smeared face to him.

"I could fashion new restraints for you from the metal in this cell," he explained reasonably, "but considering your circumstances, I think that you would prefer to find it in yourself to obey me right now, my dear. Especially considering that while I do not have direct control over your body, I certainly _do_ over the Wolverine's."

She heard Logan cry out then, from where he knelt with his back to them on the other side of Magneto. She didn't know what the terrorist was doing to him, but she could imagine well enough that she found it in herself to ignore the agony between her legs and force herself onto her hands and knees, and sobbed anew in relief when Logan's cry trailed off.

"Good girl," he said to her then, as he had before, but this time there was deep, cutting bitterness in his tone.

Magneto had released her, and he moved a step away. Rogue saw Logan rise to his feet and turn toward them, and she was struck by how much more coordinated his motion was than it had been moments ago. His shuddering wasn't as violent either, and she guessed that even his muscles must be weakening after straining unsuccessfully for so long.

"Hmm," mused Magneto, closing the distance between him and Logan. "I could probably manipulate you well enough to force you to undress yourself, but I think that this might be more amusing." His hands reached for Logan's belt buckle, and Rogue rallied at the wrongness of the image. Logan's lips drew back from his teeth in a snarl, his eyes fixed on Magneto with burning hatred.

"Please don't," she pleaded again, despite the fact that it had done her no good before. "Not... that."

Magneto pulled Logan's belt free, then unbuttoned the fly of the shorter mutant's jeans with brisk motions. He threw Rogue a wry smile. "Protective of his masculinity, are you?" He ran his hand over the thin cotton of Logan's tank top, across the broad taut expense of his pectorals, and Logan convulsed in a renewed attempt to overcome Magneto's control. "He's not really pretty enough for me and his personality leaves everything to be desired, but I must admit that there is something a bit... _compelling_ for me about a man with a metal skeleton."

Logan once more found the strength to grind the words out past his locked jaw. "Find... a way. To kill... you." Rogue felt new tears slide down her cheeks.

Magneto gave Logan a smile that would have looked reassuring if it wasn't so clearly mocking. "I'm afraid you won't. But it sounded good, didn't it?" He slid his hands beneath the waist of Logan's jeans and pushed them down, his palms sliding over the fronts of Logan's muscular thighs, and Rogue sobbed aloud.

Logan stepped out of the pooled jeans with first one leg, then the other. Part of Rogue was shocked to find that he was semi-erect, but the rest of her had known that it was inevitable.

Magneto wrapped his hand around Logan's turgid flesh without hesitation or awkwardness, and Logan practically howled in outrage as Magneto stroked him the rest of the way to hardness without a hint of self-consciousness. The ropy tendons of Logan's neck popped out with the force of his straining.

"Come now, Wolverine. Rogue is a pretty girl. We mustn't make her feel undesirable."

Rogue felt deeply nauseous both from the pain between her legs and the wrongness of what was happening. "Please, this isn't necessary," she said in a voice choked with emotion. "I'll never forget again that I belong to you. I'll stay here, I won't fight you anymore, you can finish making me into the perfect toy and I'll never complain!"

Magneto glanced at her, and for the first time she saw a trace of his fury on his face. He walked back to the head of the bunk, gesturing with his hand, forcing Logan to walk to its foot and to climb up behind Rogue, positioning himself between Rogue's calves.

He reached down and grasped her chin lightly, tilting her dirty face up a bit. "You're finally going to get what you've always wanted, my dear. I am going to force Wolverine to fuck your torn and bloody cunt." Rogue shook her head no, and his fingers tightened on her chin. "Now, you're going to want to stay in contact with my skin while he does this, or else you're going to accidentally kill him. And here, my dear, is how you can accomplish that." He released her chin, then deftly unbuttoned the fly of his uniform and pushed it down just enough to free his erection from its confines.

She could feel the immense heat of Logan's body behind her, though there was no contact. She stared in horror at Magneto's sex, jutting in her face.

"Now," he said, wrapping one hand around the base of his erection, tangling the other in her hair and tilting her head back again. "You may get some unwise ideas about how you could retaliate when you have something so dear to me between your jaws. But let me share a little secret with you, Rogue... I have not yet decided whether to let Wolverine walk out of here alive after this, and in _you_ I have one of the few weapons on earth with which I could actually end his pathetic life. So, you do understand why you don't want to let me feel so much as a single scrape from those pretty teeth of yours, don't you?"

She heard Logan growling in response, but all she could do was nod as well as she was able with his hand in her hair, as she was sobbing too hard to answer him aloud.

"Excellent, I see that we have an understanding," he said conversationally, then shoved her head down over his length, hard, until she gagged.

Rogue had never given head before. She'd asked Magneto about it once, shyly, and he had dismissed it with a comment that it was pointless with a condom, and she knew now that he couldn't have discarded the condoms without revealing the fact that he didn't need them. His taste was salty and bitter, and the musky scent of him filled her nostrils. Her nose was blocked from crying, but she did her best to draw in air around the fullness of him in her mouth as she struggled to avoid dragging her teeth across his length.

There were hands on her ass, warmth against the backs of her thighs. She forced down a surge of panic at the thought that there was no way she could endure being fucked with the injuries that she had without clamping down her jaw, and simply told herself with all the will that she could muster that she had no other option.

Logan's life depended on it, and she focused on nothing in the world other than keeping her jaw loose as she felt the head of his swollen sex slide between her bloody labia.

The pain was indescribable. He pushed himself into her relentlessly, and there was no way to know if it was just her blood easing his way or if her body had someone managed to lubricate itself under these insane conditions. The thought along with the pressure in the back of her throat made her gag anew, but she refused to let her jaw tighten at all.

Logan's thrusts were not gentle, and the length of him was dragging along her torn labia with each withdrawal and re-entry, followed by the crushing impact of his groin against her tormented flesh. He was making tortured noises, and Rogue felt tears dripping from her face onto the mattress beneath her and heard her strangled sounds of distress. There was no way that she could attempt any technique in the hopes of pushing Magneto toward orgasm under the circumstances; it was all she could do to keep her lips wrapped around him as she did her best to endure Logan's penetration. Both men were moving themselves in her wet passages, though only one of them had any volition in the matter.

Magneto's hands rested lightly on her head, and she couldn't focus enough to try to read his responses in any way. One thrust blurred into the next as she suffered, and the absurd thought intruded into her spinning head that Mystique's "lesson" had been a walk in the park compared to this agony.

"Now, let us present you with an opportunity of your own, Wolverine," she heard Magneto say from what seemed like a great distance. Still obsessively focused on not clamping down her teeth, she felt Wolverine lean forward slightly over her back, his hand moving over her hip and then abdomen to find her clitoris.

"I could force you to rub Rogue's greedy clit, but without feeling her beneath my own fingers, I doubt that I could actually make her orgasm using your hand. However, I will give you control of your hand back, and if you can push her over the edge yourself, I will allow you to stop fucking her. And you would very much like for that to happen, wouldn't you?"

It seemed that he granted Wolverine control of his jaw back in order to respond, as Logan's next words were strained but not as strangled as the previous ones he'd forced out. "I _am_ going to kill you, you sick fuck, I will find a way!"

Magneto stilled in Rogue's mouth, and she sobbed in relief at the slight reprieve, though Logan's forced thrusts had not stilled.

"This again?" Magneto said in a bored voice. "If you don't care to agree to my terms, then we'll have to go back to what we were doing, and in that case this isn't going to end until _Rogue_ brings _me_ to orgasm." He paused. "And that's going to take a long, long time, at this rate."

 _Do it do it do it_ , she pleaded with Wolverine silently, fearful that his pride and fury wouldn't allow him to put a faster end to their ordeal.

She sobbed brokenly as she felt his fingers move against her after a moment. She didn't know if she could come or not, but she knew for a fact that Magneto could hold out against orgasm forever.

Magneto chuckled. "I can feel what you're doing, my dear boy, but I'm afraid it won't count until I hear you accept my terms aloud." At that, Logan's fingers stilled again, and Rogue forced herself to rock back against Logan in a silent plea despite the pain that it caused her, as it was her only way to urge him to give in.

Logan's voice was hoarse. "I'll do it."

She couldn't see anything but her own sweaty hair and the shadows against Magneto's groin, but she could practically _feel_ his cold, triumphant smile above her. He began to thrust into her anew in time with Logan's rhythm, and Logan's fingers began to move again against her clit.

It was one of the greatest challenges she'd ever faced to ensure that she did not bite Magneto as Logan slammed into her and simultaneously to try to shift under Logan's fingers to help him give her the right pressure and placement to push her toward orgasm. A part of her tried to protest that this was an impossibility, but Rogue simply refused to listen, as there was really no other option.

_This is impossible!_

_No,_ she snarled back at herself. _I refuse for it to be!_

_Impossible!_

_I will do this!_

Logan's fingers on her were skillful, and she said a prayer of thanks for the many lurid adventures of his life as she somehow began to feel the tension coil deep in her belly. Part of her insisted on reminding her of how tortured Logan must be over being forced to do this to her himself, but she brushed that voice away along with the one insisting that there was no way she could come.

 _Do it do it do it_ , she chanted again, this time at herself, terrified that she might bite down when she came even if she'd managed to avoid doing it as Logan fucked her injured body.

 _You're never going to get over the edge!_ the panicked voice insisted even as the climb toward orgasm became more pronounced.

_I have to! I have no choice!_

Logan was pounding into her more fiercely now and Magneto was pushing himself further down her clenching throat. Rogue was desperate, without shame, without conscious thought, simply striving, striving for the thing that would put an end to her ordeal.

Then Magneto thrust hard, as she flailed in panic as she felt the sudden, violent spasm of her stomach.

_No!_

Magneto jerked free of her mouth, still holding her hair, and there was a burning sensation both on her scalp and in the back of her throat as she twisted and tried to lurch forward so that she wouldn't vomit on the bed.

She managed by force of will to hold down the contents of her stomach, but as her arms gave out and she gagged in disgust she felt the other building spasm take hold of her at the same time that her skin began to draw from Logan due to the contact with Magneto being broken.

Magneto grabbed her face and the pull stopped instantly. It didn't matter, as at the same moment she fell forward, jerking, and Logan's erection slipped free of her body as he stayed upright on his knees.

Rogue felt very, very far away from everything that was happening as her aborted orgasm faded quickly. It slowly registered to her that the agony between her legs had abated, as well as the burn of her scalp. Trying to think was like trying to do the breaststroke through a pool filled with molasses, but she forced herself to try to remember if she might have drawn enough from Logan to hurt or kill him, if he was still upright because he was still conscious or if Magneto was holding him there.

She rolled with a groan, not thinking of the fact that she was pulling free of Magneto's touch again and her calves were still pressed against Logan's. The pull started again and she scrambled backward and would have fallen off the head of the bed if Magneto hadn't been standing there. She wound up pressed up against his clothed form, but at least she wasn't touching Logan and she could see that his eyes were still open.

Oh god, now she really was going to puke.

She twisted and leaned over the edge of the bed, her head pressed against the outside of Magneto's leg, as her stomach lost its battle. For some unfathomable reason Magneto leaned over and drew her hair back, away from her sweating face, like one friend does for another in the grip of illness.

He'd just tortured her, but he was going to help her keep from getting vomit in her hair?

She subsided slowly, clinging to his leg. She seemed to have cried herself out as there were no fresh sobs. She froze, not knowing what she should do, but Magneto was simply continuing to hold her hair as if he were uncertain if she was done throwing up. After a long pause, she spit on the floor, then sat back gingerly, turning and leaning against the wall.

 


	23. Chapter 23

"Please.  Just tell me what you want from me.  Anything."

Rogue barely recognized her own voice.  It was hoarse, broken.  And it wasn't an effect of the screaming, as the jolt of healing factor that had repaired her torn labia would have done the same to any damage to her throat.  This was raw emotion.  Desperation.  She stared up at Magneto, who was gazing back at her with a thoughtful, calculating expression.

She pushed herself to her knees on the edge of the bunk in front of him, her back to Logan, who was still kneeling where he'd been when she lurched away from him to vomit.  She raised her trembling hands to the front of Magneto's uniform and looked up into his face imploringly, letting all her emotions play openly across her own.  The pain, the fear... the desire, the longing.  Let him see it all.  Rogue was too exhausted, too hurt to try to figure out how to escape the situation any more.  She had no power.  He had it all.  She would just ask him what he wanted and try to do it.

"Anything?" he echoed with interest.  "I doubt that."

She shrugged helplessly.  He wasn't pushing her hands away from him.  She reached up to his face and ran her fingers over his mouth.  She could smell him with Logan's heightened sense, and it was the same scent that had always filled her with longing for him.  He was clean, masculine.  Not musky.  Almost spicy.  She didn't know if it was cologne or soap or just his skin.

"Tell me, please.  I'll try.  You've won.  I can't fight you.  I was foolish to try."

She heard Logan's noises of protest behind her.  "No... kid... stop.  You can't do this.  I won't let you."  She ignored him.  She had to.  She wanted Logan to get out of this safely, she truly did, but she no longer believed that she could save him.  Only Magneto's mercy would, so there was nothing to do but appeal to that directly and hope.  And offer him whatever she could in exchange.

She turned her head just a little, so that Logan would be able to see the side of her face.  "Logan, please.  I'm sorry for letting you down.  But it's over.  This is the right thing to do."

Magneto wrapped his fingers around Rogue's wrist and gently lowered her hand away from his face, back to his chest.  His touch was warm and dry, his eyes studying her.

Rogue knew that if she'd been there with any X-Man other than Logan, she might have hoped that he or she would stay silent out of the belief that Rogue was bluffing to get them both out.  But not Logan.  He could smell her, just like she could smell Magneto, and with his instincts he would know that there was no fight left in her.  She wanted Magneto regardless of what the price was, regardless of what he'd just done.

Magneto inclined his head just a fraction.  "I will not allow you to stay here unless I am certain that you are done fighting me, Rogue.  No matter how badly I want you, I will not risk this war in order to have you.  I would rather kill you both tonight and be done with it."  She simply nodded, and he paused.  "Also, there is the small issue of my... considerable... anger."

Rogue paled, but did not look away, and he continued.  "Although I do recall making a promise to you that I would never kill you in a fit of erotic passion."

"What the hell are you doing, Rogue?" Logan growled.

"Logan, shut up!" Rogue snapped.  She half-turned.  "I know you don't approve, but you can't stop me!  Just shut up and let me do it!"

Magneto's cool blue eyes were moving back and forth between his two captives.  "I think we've heard enough from the Wolverine, haven't we?  This is between you and I now."  He flicked his fingers, and a long strip of metal tore itself away from the wall with a horrid rending noise, then wrapped itself around the lower half of Logan's face, forming itself to his jaw and mouth as if it were heavy silk instead of metal.  Rogue could barely hear the muffled sounds he was making, but his eyes blazed with fury and his shoulders shook as he renewed his pointless struggle against Magneto's hold.

Rogue shook her head ruefully.  Logan would fight until he was dead or unconscious, whether he had any chance or not.  She would not.  She could not.  Not this man.

Anyone else, perhaps.  But not Magneto.

She looked back to him.  "How?" she asked.  "What can I do, for you to be certain of me?"

His eyes flickered back to Wolverine, and her stomach dropped.  "I... please don't make me.  Not that--"

"Shh," he interrupted smoothly.  For a man who had just told her that he was infuriated with her, he still looked far too calm, far too detached.  Rogue was terrified of what he was going to ask of her, but somehow her terror no longer mattered so much.

"Then what?" she asked forlornly.

Both of Magneto's hands were wrapped around Rogue's wrists, her palms still pressed against his chest.  Gently he lifted them, placing her palms to the back of her neck instead.  He nudged her elbows outward, until she was displayed before him exactly as he wanted her.

Rogue took a deep breath and straightened her back.  He didn't like it when she slouched.

Her gaze was locked imploringly on his face, and though there was a small smile playing about his mouth, his eyes had changed.  He no longer looked quite so calm.  He looked... a little bit angry, now.  Hard.  Finally.  She didn't know if that was a good sign or a bad one.

His gestures, however, remained gentle, as he smoothed her hair back from her face, lifting it over her shoulders so that it fell down her bare back in one heavy sheaf.  The contrast between his touches and his expression made her breath catch in her throat.  She was deeply relieved that he had just acknowledged that he remembered his promise not to kill her in passion, as otherwise she wouldn't have been at all sure that she was going to walk out of this dank and chilly room alive.

As it was, she knew that she (and Logan) would only walk out alive if she could convince him that her rebellion was over for good.  And that if she could not, Magneto would feel perfectly justified killing her as a matter of strategy, despite his promise not to kill her in passion.

Better not to think about that.  Better just to do what he wanted.

He ran his bare hands down over her shoulders, to her small, high breasts.  Past those, over the sloping curves of her stomach and hips and the fronts of her thighs.  He was clearly considering.  Part of her wanted to try to anticipate what he was going to demand of her.  The rest thought it would be better just to wait.  And some part was still simply filled with bliss, no matter how inappropriate the circumstances, by the feeling of skin against her own.

"Well, my dear, it seems that we have two problems to overcome tonight, but perhaps we can resolve them both with a single course of action.  I need to exorcise my fury at your betrayal, and you need to prove to me that I can trust you to never repeat that betrayal.  These are not easy tasks for either of us."

She leaned forward slightly, toward him.  She could feel Logan's presence behind her, but she couldn't afford to pay attention to that.  Only to Magneto, to what he told her to do.

He dragged his fingertips over her throat.  "Turn around, Rogue."

She caught her lower lip between her teeth and gave him a lingering, apprehensive glance from beneath lowered lashes, then turned slowly on her knees.  She and Logan were now facing each other, but she couldn't bring herself to meet the accusing hazel eyes that stared at her from above the gleam of his gag.

She loved Logan too, if differently than she did Magneto, but that didn't matter anymore.

Magneto pressed against her back, his hands slipping around to find her breasts.  Logan was forced to move toward her, and this time Rogue did not pull away.  It was still horrible to see proud, powerful Logan manipulated like a toy soldier, and she still hoped with all her heart for him to emerge from the evening unscathed--well, at least physically.  But having given up on anything except letting Magneto orchestrate events as he saw fit and striving to accept his control, there was no use dwelling on the wrongness of what was being done to Wolverine.  It was going to happen, and all she could do was hope that the outcome would not scar him horribly.

Logan's hands settled on her thighs, his right one trailing up to her center.  Magneto's control had become masterful enough that Rogue could no longer see the evidence of Wolverine's resistance in the stilted way that his limbs were forced to move.  The feel of his fingers on her flesh was less mechanical, smoother, now, and Rogue actually shuddered in pleasure, ignoring her guilt at feeling like this from an act that was reprehensible to the man being made to perform it.

There was drying, tacky blood still smeared across her thighs and sex, which should have disturbed her more. Her injuries were fully healed, though, and she sighed as his fingers slipped between her swollen labia.  She was looking down at his hand in order to avoid seeing his eyes, the roughness of his knuckles and the strength of his fingers reminding her to whom it belonged.  She could almost, almost pretend that this wasn't essentially rape.

Two fingers slipped easily inside of her, and she groaned and spread her thighs.  Magneto reached up and lowered her arms, which were still clasped behind her head, so that she could brace some of her weight on them against the bunk.  At the same time he leaned her back into him, so that some of her weight rested against him, and she shifted her calves out from beneath her, so that she was sprawled between them instead of half-kneeling.

Logan's bare fingers penetrated and stroked her thoroughly, and Rogue squirmed beneath his touch.  Magneto continued to caress her breasts and throat, his touch far softer than she was used to from him.  All in all, Rogue had never experienced such a luxurious wealth of unconflictedly erotic sensation in her life.  Bobby had been this focused on her pleasure, but he only had two hands, and anyway he was far less skilled than either of the men touching her now.  Magneto and Mystique together had overwhelmed her with stimulation in the same way, but that experience -- as so many of hers with Magneto -- had been defined more by pain than pleasure.  Here she was, rocking between the deft touches of two experienced, sexually confident men who at present seemed intent on making her feel blissfully good.  At least, that was how she allowed herself to think of it... the fact was that the deftness of all of these touches was only the result of one man's skill at present.

Logan was stretching her now, pressing a third finger into the cleft between her legs, and though the pressure was becoming uncomfortable, the discomfort itself, the sensation of fullness, was tremendously wanton and erotic.  She pushed herself downward onto Logan's hand, whimpering as she pressed the side of her face against the inside of Magneto's forearm.  The stimulation was becoming so intense, her abandonment so irresistible, that she was nearly forgetting to fear Magneto's intentions.  His fingers on her nipples were pulling and pinching now, his hands squeezing into her flesh, but the increased intensity of his touch was satisfying instead of painful.

"Give the girl more, Wolverine," he coaxed, as if instructing Logan aloud instead of manipulating him directly.  Clearly the words were merely for her benefit, and the effect was as Magneto clearly wanted; the fire burning in the pit of her belly grew hotter as she heard his words foreshadowing what was to come.  She didn't know if she could take more, but the masochist in her didn't care if it tore her apart.  Logan's fingers slid much of the way free of her body, then pressed back in and she was fuller than ever.  She mewled and twisted, feeling the entirety of Logan's hand trying to press its way into her stretched and burning passage.  She glanced up through slitted eyes at his angry brow and furious gaze above the metal that restrained his words, and in her passion she could not deny that the reminder of Magneto's power, even at Logan's expense, was intoxicating.

Rogue had heard of this -- that it was possible for someone to get their whole hand inside of a woman -- but had no idea how it was done.  She was breathing hard and slow, trying to relax around the widest part of Logan's hand, but her excitement and his relentlessness made it difficult.

"Open up, my dear," Magneto told her in a low voice, hands tangling in her hair, nails drawing over her throat.  "Open all the way up.  Let us in..."

Rogue moaned loudly, aroused by the strange union of Logan and Magneto that was invading her, more aroused than horrified in this moment at the way that Magneto was using Logan like a puppet to fuck her.

"Open up, Rogue, take it all for me... take us inside... all the way in..."

For some reason, the sensation of burning was much more intense than the sensation of stretching now, but she could practically feel her body swallowing Logan's hand.  Her head pressed back wildly against Magneto, who was slipping his fingers between her gasping lips.

"Yess.." he urged her on.  "It's almost time, my dear, you're almost there."  He pressed his fingers far back in her throat, and the awareness of being penetrated and opened and invaded was all-consuming.  Her body twisted between them, but she could not escape and didn't really want to.  Rogue moaned loudly and felt Logan press the widest part of his hand incrementally into her.  She felt her body slowly, slowly give way beneath the pressure, and suddenly there was a slight relief to the burning and the feeling of indescribable fullness shifted deeper into her body.

Oh god.  She could feel his knuckles pressing against her cervix.  She wanted to look down, to see Logan's wrist protruding from her body, but Magneto had her head tilted back.  She was making a high keening noise, and Logan was barely flexing his hand, and it was the most intense sensation of being fucked that she'd ever felt in her life.

She opened her eyes and stared up into Magneto's face above her.  His chilly, pale eyes were gleaming with lust and with terrible intent.  Some tiny part of Rogue tried to remind her of his earlier words -- _I need to exorcise my fury at your betrayal, and you need to prove to me that I can trust you to never repeat that betrayal._

How was forcing Logan's hand into her going to accomplish either of--

No, no, Rogue refused to think, instead arching herself into Magneto's touch, pressing downward onto Logan's hand, whimpering loudly, her fingers scrabbling against the flimsy, scratchy mattress beneath her.  The wool of his uniform was scratchy against her cheek whenever she turned her head.  She could still faintly hear Logan's grunts; she could smell the acrid aroma of sex in the small chamber.  There was so much pressure inside her, but without any stimulation on her clit, she didn't know if she could orgasm or not.  The air felt damp and cool against her sweat-slicked skin, but Rogue herself was feverish with desire by now.

She thought she might die if she had to take much more of this without coming.  She tried to plead with Magneto with her eyes, since her mouth was still full of his fingers pressing on her tongue.

"Are you ready to prove your loyalty, my dear?" he asked her in a voice that betrayed only the slightest hint of strain, still carrying its characteristic notes of arrogance and condescension.  His fingers slid out of her mouth and dragged a trail of her saliva over her cheek as his hands pushed into the tangled strands at the nape of her neck.  "You must ensure that the X-Men will never accept you again."

Her eyes rolled wildly.  "H-how?" she gasped though her haze of arousal.

His smile was grim and his eyes narrowed as they flicked down her stretched, bowed body.  Rogue heard Logan's stifled scream of outrage at the same moment that terrible, piercing pain flared deep in her tummy.  Rogue shrieked and flailed, but Magneto was holding her shoulders in a tight grip.

For several panicked seconds, Rogue thought that Magneto had forced Logan to impale her from inside with his claws.  Then she realized that, as heinous as it was, it didn't hurt _that_ badly.

She blinked fiercely at the tears trailing down into her hair, somehow trying to get her arms back under her again, trying to still her panic in the hopes that the pain would subside.  Her eyes flew to Logan, whose hair and forehead was drenched in sweat, his eyes wild.

"That was little more than a quarter of an inch," Magneto told her calmly, and she realized that it was indeed Logan's claws that had caused her torment.  His hand was still inside her now, but Rogue's twitches would of course be moving the fraction of an inch of razors now probably buried in her cervix.  She forced herself to stop moving, panting heavily in her terror.

"Nuh-no m-more," she begged him openly, her words slurred with her pain.  He stroked her cheek tenderly.

"But you have to take more, Rogue.  You have to take it all."

Rogue's throat almost closed in her fright, the muscles of her arms giving way beneath her.  "That-that'd kill m-me," she rasped.  His fingers were wrapped in her hair so tightly that the baby hairs on the back of her neck were tearing free, but she barely noticed.  "You said--"

"I do not intend to kill you, my dear," he interrupted.  "I intend to make you beg me to use the Wolverine's claws to impale you, and then I intend to make you beg me to use his mutation to save your life.   _That_ is what I intend to make you do, my dear girl, and if you do not, it's going to happen anyway.  But if you willingly participate, knowing what's to come?  I think that seeing that degree of obedience to my obviously demented demands will be enough to turn even the Wolverine's loyalties away from you."

She stared at him in disbelief.  This couldn't be happening.  It just couldn't.  He couldn't mean it.

She'd come crawling back and begged his forgiveness after he'd forced Logan to tear the piercings that _he'd_ given her out of her flesh.  Surely that was penance enough.  Logan being forced to pop his claws with his hand buried inside of her wasn't sadomasochistic sex.  It was...

Well, it was insane, which was Magneto's point, wasn't it?

And then she was supposed to beg him to let her absorb Logan's healing factor in order to save herself?

"N-no, sir, please, I can't," she sobbed, the words sticking in her throat.  "That's t-too much.  I can't--"

His hands cupped the base of her skull, thumbs bracing themselves under her ears, forcing her to look at him.  "You can, Rogue.  You will."

Rogue was terrified of the fact that she was begging him not to make her do it.  Didn't that imply that she would if forced?

If only he hadn't clouded her ability to think with intense arousal and then intense pain before making his intentions clear.  Rogue knew that she wasn't in her right mind, but couldn't for the life of her think of what she would have done if she had been.

"Magneto, suh-sir, I can't tah--I won't be able to t-take that, that's, it's like, it's torture."  Her words were high and rushed.

"Yes, well, you do recall that I have my own issues to address here, don't you?"  His eyes were glittering in the gloom of the cell.

He was mad.  He was utterly mad.  In her dire circumstances, Rogue finally saw the truth.  He was literally insane.

She stared into his eyes, transfixed.  Her words were a ghost of a whisper.  "I can't," she breathed.

And made a strangled sound as anguish blossomed anew in the pit of ache and despair beneath her belly button.  Her vision swam and her limbs twitched before she was able to decide that once again she hadn't actually been impaled, just prodded.  Magneto was leaning forward now, and his breath was hot on her face, his gaze inches from her, pinning her as surely as Wolverine's adamantium buried in her cervix.  "Beg for it, Rogue, or it's going to happen anyway, and if that happens, it will all be for naught, as you won't be allowed to stay if you don't tell me you want this.  Now... beg!"

Another fraction of an inch of steel sliced its way through delicate tissues on his last word, and Rogue cried out in desperation.

"Oh god, if it's what you want, then please!" she heard herself shriek in a voice twisted with her suffering.  "Do it, do whatever you want, torture me, I don't care!  Do it and let me stay with you!"

He didn't even try to hide his triumph.  "Are you sure, little girl?  Is that truly what you want?"  His fingers dug into the soft places beneath her jaw as he held her head immobile.

"I want you," she pleaded brokenly.  "I want you.  Whatever that takes.  Torture me if you want.  I want you."  Her voice gave out as she began to sob, overwhelmed with her fear of the pain to come.

His smile was slow and possessive.  "Then you shall have me," he told her softly, and his eyes did not waver from hers as they narrowed in concentration.

The characteristic _snikt_ of Wolverine's claws extending fully and snapping into their housings was entirely muffled by the density of Rogue's body.  Likewise, his howls of anguish and denial were contained by the metal that wrapped around his entire jaw.  He was sweating profusely, and every tendon in his body stood out in a desperate, fruitless strain against the manipulation of the metal inside of him.

Rogue's head snapped upward out of Magneto's grip as searing torment sliced through her body, starting in her burning, stretched passage and culminating a split-second later in the worst pain she had ever felt in her life high in her stomach.  Her shrieks were garbled, and blood trickled out of one corner of her mouth from where she bit down, followed after mere seconds by frothy pink bile that sent her into a terrible coughing fit.  For some reason, she was astonished at the clarity of the scene before her eyes, and she marveled at the sight of Logan's razor-sharp claws, gleaming in the few places where her blood was not clinging to them, emerging from her body in three evenly-spaced sites across the middle of her torso.

" _Oh god,_ " she half-croaked, half-gurgled, as there were no adequate words for the horror of the moment.

Magneto wrenched her head back again and angled his hot, forceful mouth over hers.  He didn't spare a thought for her coughing or the acrid substance that was being pushed up from the back of her throat... all he seemed to care about was claiming her mouth while she convulsed beneath his kiss from the torture that she had begged him to inflict.  Rogue head was swimming with her pain and fear as he bruised her mouth, biting her lip hard, and then tore himself away from her.

"Now beg me to let you live at his expense," he snarled demandingly, eyes blazing.

"Pleesh... sah... m-my skinnn..." Her words were wet and indistinct, but it seemed to be enough.

"Good girl," he murmured, pulling his hands away from her face so that she was left slumped back against his chest, her skin isolated from his by his uniform.  Rogue gasped once, then again, waiting for the pull to start, and somehow the knowledge that she was mere seconds away from relief from this torment didn't make it any easier to bear.  She gasped again, fingers spasming, wondering why it hadn't started.

She gasped once more, staring in panic at Logan, who remained frozen and mute above her, a tableau of silent fury.

When it finally started, the draw itself only intensified everything she was feeling for several long seconds.  She experienced once again the bizarre and unnerving sensation of flesh knitting itself together, tissue repairing itself, a process which both itched miserably and felt like unfettered electricity running through her body in unpredictable arcs.  Her back bowed even further, her limbs convulsing slightly, but her body was clamped down on Logan's hand so hard that there was no danger of him pulling free.

She realized vaguely that if he didn't get his hand out of her -- if Magneto didn't release him, or manipulate him to get away from her -- she was going to drain too much, but she was too overwhelmed by what was happening to her to try to communicate this.  No, she didn't want to kill Logan!  She didn't know how she'd live with herself if she did...

She barely noticed that the half-formed snippets of the hellish life that she was imagining if Logan died here was still a life here in this place with Magneto.

In the midst of Rogue's anguish, new pain flared as Logan's hand began to pull itself free of her body.  Her entire body flexed violently, from a bow backward into a curl forward, and Rogue watched Logan's fist tear out of her... his claws were still extended about four inches, and he had cocked his wrist and sliced upward out of her, pulling back as he went, cutting her entire mons to shreds of bloody tissue.

Rogue's voice had started to give out from her screaming, but she screamed anyway, her eyes fixed with wide horror on the sight of Logan's blood-drenched fist and claws.  His eyes were now rolled up in his head, and it was clear that she had drained enough from him to knock him cold if not kill him.

She continued to shriek, her arms flailing backward now, her heels pushing down into the shabby mattress as she pushed back against the solidity of Magneto.  She could feel her body continue to heal this new damage, and she felt herself shoved down flat on the platform at the same moment that she heard the heavy rattling _thud_ of Logan's body being thrust aside and dropped on the floor.

Magneto was on top of her, the voluminous cloak of his uniform caught over one arm to fall to the side as he straddled her.  His face was a mask of rage, his teeth bared, and he pushed the trousers of his uniform down to his thighs and thrust into the still half-torn place between her thighs even as her body continued to heal itself.

"You will _never_ defy me again," he commanded in his hardest voice, rocking forward hard into her.  "You will never disobey me, never give me reason to question your loyalty, never try to free yourself from me!  Tell me this is true, Rogue!"

Her fingers curled into his chest, and she could do nothing but stare up at him, transfixed.  She had forgotten Logan's plight entirely.

"Yes, sir," she whispered hoarsely, her voice feverish with intensity.

"After tonight, you can never claim that you do not know of what I am capable, and you are pledging yourself to me in full awareness of my capacity for brutality!"

She swallowed.  The torment was slowly abating, her sex knitting itself back together around the very invasion of Magneto's flesh, and she pushed up on her heels, rising up to meet him in their desperate coupling.  "Yes, sir," she gasped again.

His hand tangled in her hair, wrenching her head back painfully, and his teeth sank into her throat.  She squealed, but there could be no denying that there was a note of satisfaction to that squeal.

His thrusts were becoming harder, deeper, and he buried his face against the side of her neck.  "To whom do you belong?" he rasped out.

"To you, sir."

His fingers pulled at the long strands of her hair, his mouth against her ear.  "To whom, little girl?"

She turned her head toward him, and he allowed his lips to slide across her cheek.  "To you!"  Her whisper was nearly lost among the noise of flesh against flesh and limbs against stone, but she knew he heard her.

He fisted his hand in her hair at the back of her skull so hard that she could not move her head an inch, his mouth hovering over her open one, as he thrust into her one final time and stiffened and held himself there, spending himself with only the lowest of groans.

"To whom, Rogue?" he asked her one last time, his eyes searching hers.

"To you, Magneto," she replied softly, her face smeared with tears and blood, her eyes red from hours of crying, her voice ravaged, but her gaze unwavering.

* * *

It was strange, in the aftermath, that her consciousness finally gave out on her now that the danger was passed.  She found herself lying where he left her, floating fuzzily, watching him thoughtlessly as he stood and composed himself.

His face was stern as he gazed down at her, straightening the high collar of his jacket and cloak.  She blinked blearily.

"You need a bath and some food," he said in a cool voice.  "And a lot of water before you can sleep."

She said nothing.  One of her legs was bent under her at an uncomfortable angle, but for some reason it didn't occur to her to move it.

"Sit up, girl," he instructed, reaching down and pulling on her upper arm.  She complied automatically, not even noticing her own winces.  Her body may have healed all the damage that had been done to it with Logan's healing factor, but that didn't mean that the evening's activities hadn't taken a toll.  She felt stiff and strange and disconnected.

"Hmm."  He pursed his lips thoughtfully for a moment, then picked her up in his arms in a swift motion.  She merely blinked up at him some more, entranced by this new view of his profile, comforted by her closeness to him.

Her turned toward the bars, which parted themselves as they had for his entrance, and stepped carefully over the prone form of Wolverine.  Rogue nuzzled forward vaguely.  "Is it over?" she asked in a thick voice.

"It's over, Rogue," he replied levelly, carrying her down the cool stone hallway.

"We don't have to do that ever again, do we, sir?"  One of her arms was draped over his shoulders, and it wound itself gently in a curl of his silver hair behind his ear.

He glanced down at her strangely.  "No, Rogue.  You're going to behave, and we're never going to have to do anything like that ever again."


	24. Chapter 24

Rogue groaned as sunlight suddenly flooded the room where she'd been sleeping.  The footsteps that followed were much lighter than Erik's, and after a moment a weight settled beside Rogue on the bed and an elegant hand wiped a cool cloth across her face.

She opened her eyes slowly, squinting in the dazzling mid-day light.  Its reflection off of all the metal in the room intensified the effect.  However, Mystique's unique coloring made her easy to identify.

"You won't get much coddling around here, so don't get used to it," the metamorph told her calmly, handing the washcloth to Rogue.

"Oh," Rogue replied fuzzily.  "I... okay."

A long moment passed while Rogue blinked herself awake.  Mystique seemed content to sit there and study her, her own arms crossed.

The room was empty other than the two of them.  Erik's room.  Where he had brought her after... well, _afterwards_.

"He'll be gone until tomorrow morning," Mystique informed her.  "Pyro and I will help you learn your way around.  You'll have to be careful for a while.  I doubt the others will trust you."

"The others?" Rogue echoed, finally deciding to push herself up into a sitting position.  "Does that mean that you do?"

Mystique snorted and stood, but it sounded less derisive than Rogue expected.  "I trust Erik to ensure the loyalty of his followers, and he said that you'll do as you're told."

Rogue gazed up at her, memories of the previous evening's horrors replaying in her head, a terrible image of Wolverine crumpled nude on the floor of the cell as Magneto carried her away from it.  The older woman seemed to be waiting for something.  Rogue worried her bottom lip.

"What?" Mystique prompted her.  Her voice wasn't exactly harsh.  Maybe... maybe a little warning? 

"It's just... it's not that.  Not that it matters much.  But I guess... I guess I was wondering..."

Rogue trailed off, rethinking all that she had learned about Magneto, about his life, about her place in his life.  Mystique's eyes were shining expectantly.

"Well," Rogue said finally.  "Now that I think about it, it doesn't matter at all, does it?  Erik handles things as he sees fit."

For a moment, a smile tugged at the shapely corner of Mystique's mouth.  She turned away.  "That's right, Rogue.  That's exactly right."

* * *

Rogue stood on a rooftop balcony that could really only be described as a rampart, shivering in the bone-deep chill of the spray.  It was amazing to her that she could feel the wetness on her face this far above the waves below, but they were in the middle of a very vast expanse of dark, churning ocean.

She didn't know if Wolverine was alive or not.  And she was struggling with the realization that it didn't matter.

She'd been tortured the previous night, and that didn't matter either.

She felt like it _should_ matter.  And yet...

Rogue exhaled, pulling the heavy jacket that she'd been given tighter around her shoulders.  It was late afternoon, but already the light was starting to take on the dreamy cast of evening.

She had accepted her place in Magneto's life.  She didn't even want to try to fight him anymore.  He was beyond ruthless; she didn't even know if she thought that he was sane.  He'd made sure that if she surrendered to him, she would do it without any illusions about what kind of man he was.

So what kind of woman did that make her?

She'd never really been a soldier, despite many months of drilling with the X-Men before the war over the cure.  She was no scholar, no engineer, and certainly no leader.  She was apparently a masochist, but that didn't seem like much of an identity, didn't seem like much to offer.  She was just an amateur sculptor mutant girl with a couple of months of college under her belt.

She was deadly, but knew that using her powers on too many people would probably drive her insane.  What could she do with that?

"Jesus, Rogue, it's fucking freezing up here.  What are you doing?"

Pyro's voice carried over the salty breeze.  He was wearing a jacket too, but it was lighter than Rogue's, unlined.  His shoulders were hunched against the chill.

"Thinking," Rogue replied shortly, eyes narrowed.

His response was a skeptical grunt.  "Well, if you want any dinner, you better get down to the mess.  Remy'll eat it all if you don't get your share first.  Skinny fucker."

Rogue reached out and grabbed at Pyro's sleeve and he glanced at her in surprise.  She was ungloved, though she didn't grab anywhere near his skin.

"Do you believe in him?" she asked urgently.

Pyro squinted at her.  "The boss, you mean?"

She just nodded, and he frowned.

"Shit, Rogue, he's the only hope we've got.  What, you never really believed in that whiny milquetoast Xavier, did you?"

Rogue shrugged with one arm, and Pyro turned away, toward the door.  "C'mon, loser.  Time for chow.  You can navelgaze later."

* * *

"So she's his bit, is she?"

Rogue tried to ignore the muttering.  She had sat down beside Pyro, who seemed to have an easy camaraderie with the other mutants present, and focused on the hot meal in front of her.  No one spoke to her.  She was surprised to note that the dining hall was small and cozy and warmly decorated and entirely unlike what the word "mess" had conjured up in her brain.  It didn't strike her as Erik's style, but neither did it strike her as something that would annoy him.  Obviously somebody didn't want to eat their meals in the same kind of cold sterility that seemed to characterize the rest of Lanthanide Cove.

The food was surprisingly palatable -- chicken parmagiana with crisp, steamed broccoli and a fresh salad -- and she gathered from the teasing both that John had cooked tonight and that everyone enjoyed ribbing him about how abysmal he'd been at the duty when he first joined the Brotherhood.  There were almost ten mutants in the small room, and Rogue was well aware of the sidelong glances she was attracting.

She didn't look up, just concentrated on cutting her entree and consuming it.

It was toward the end of the meal that there was a lull in the noise volume in the room, and she suddenly heard a hard male voice say, "Hey.  Girlie!"

Should she look up?  She thought that maybe she noticed Pyro tense slightly beside her.  Did that mean that he was willing to look out for her if need be?

Rogue raised her eyes slowly, peering out from between her white locks.  It reminded her why she was there, and she squared her shoulders minutely, remembering that it was a bad idea for anyone to challenge her presence too vigorously.

She was Magneto's, and Magneto was in charge here.

She was being addressed by a straw-haired man the size of a small house, whose vast bulk draped over the sides of his chair.  He was chewing slowly, staring at her with beady eyes, and the exchange had immediately won the attention of everyone present, who had clearly been curious about Rogue from the moment she walked into the room.

"Yes?" Rogue said slowly.

He chewed some more, than swallowed, then stared some more.  "What's your name?"

Rogue deliberately cut off another bite of chicken.  "It's Rogue."  She knew that her heart-rate had picked up a bit, but she was not going to panic and blow this.  This was her life now, unless Magneto decided otherwise, and it was time to carve her place in it.  If he wanted her here, then here she would stay.

"Rogue," he repeated, and she couldn't help but conclude that he was a bit dull.  She could almost see the gears turning in his beefy head.  "So how come you're here, little ROGUE?  You don't look like you're good for much besides warming Magnus's bed."

Rogue put down her fork and looked directly at him.  He just _reeked_ of bully.  "My reasons for being here are my business and Magneto's."

From out of her line of vision, she heard _click... clack_.  Pyro's lighter.  She didn't really know if she could count on him if push came to shove, but at least there was someone here with whom she'd at some point shared a laugh, a smile.

"Uh huh," said the oversized guy, skeptically.  "Well, maybe we're just curious.  Maybe we want to know.  And Magneto ain't here."

"Then you'll have to wait to ask him about it, wonchya?" Rogue returned brusquely, and heard Pyro chuff appreciatively beside her.  Several of the other mutants were regarding the escalation with increased interest, including a handsome young man with red eyes who smirked approvingly at Rogue.

"Don't you get a lip with me, girlie," said the first mutant, pushing his chair back from the table a few inches.

Under the table, Rogue quickly drew off her gloves.  "Ain't no lip, my friend.  I'm just redirecting you to the man in charge.  I figure maybe he'll be willing to speak in small enough words for you to understand him.  I can't think of anything simpler than 'none... of... your... business,' myself."  She sounded braver than she felt, and she swallowed hard against the lump in her throat.

 _Click... clack_.  Rogue smiled sweetly at the mutant across the table.  He was turning red.

"Do you need me to come over there and spank you?" he ground out in a furious voice, flexing his massive muscles under their enormous slabs of fat and skin.

Rogue took a quick breath.  There was the direct threat of humiliation and violence.  She had to prove herself quick and hard, or the challenges to her presence would get worse whenever Magneto's back was turned.  She was among dangerous mutants, and she had to decide to be dangerous herself.

"Let me save you the trouble, since it looks like you're a little out of shape," Rogue said, getting out of her chair.  "I'll come over there and you can spank me."

She heard the red-eyed mutant chuckle under his breath, and as she walked around the table she realized that at some point Mystique had paused in the doorway to the dining hall to watch what was transpiring.  She seemed to be making no move to stop it though, and neither was Pyro, and they were the only two who had reason to suspect what was coming.  Evidently they were both ready to let Rogue establish her own place in the pecking order.  A few of the other mutants were offering encouraging taunts, evidently relishing whatever was to come.

"Come on, sugah," Rogue said provocatively, advancing on the red-faced refridgerator of a man.  "You gonna teach me a lesson?  Gonna have to throw me over your lap.  Gotta get a good grip."  She held out her bare arm.

He looked at her, caught between anger and apprehension.  Clearly it was occurring to him that he must be missing something, for her to be responding to his provocation like this, but he didn't know what.

"I will!" he said angrily.  "And I know Magneto, he won't punish _me_ , he'll hold it against _you_ for letting me do it!"

 _Probably true_ , she thought ruefully even as she shifted her posture, sticking out one hip to the side in the defiant stance of teenaged girls everywhere.

"C'mon, you ain't scared of little ole me, are ya?" she asked, laying her accent on thick.  "I'm only about a tenth of your size!  Where's my lesson?"

Being braced for it didn't really much it much less unpleasant when it came.  The big guy grabbed her wrist to pull her over his lap -- Blob, his name was Blob, she knew that almost instantly -- and had barely managed to jerk her off balance when she began to absorb him.  He tried to pull away from her, but she clamped her other bare hand onto the back of his enormous wrist, which was too big for her fingers to even begin to encircle.  She held on as he began to yell in pain, and though he was far too strong for her to keep him from pulling away, she managed to lean forward and keep her hand on his even as he pulled back.

"Getteroffme!" he bellowed unpleasantly, lurching back in his chair and breaking it into splinters, sending them both crashing downward.

Rogue managed to mostly keep her feet and her dignity even as he crashed to the floor.  She could feel his strength surging through her along with his plodding, irritated thoughts, and she judged it the right moment to pull away just as his eyes started to roll up into his head.  She let him fall the rest of the way as she regained her balance.

Rogue looked around the room, breathing a little harder than usual but not too obviously labored.  Most of the other mutants were eyeing her cautiously or with a little more interest now.  She'd knocked the Blob down; it was time for her to display the other side of her powers.

She planted one foot on his massive, woozy corpse and easily rolled him away from her.  The punked-out girl mutant closest to them actually gasped in mild surprise at the show of strength.  "Anyone else got any extra powers that they wanna get rid of?" Rogue asked challengingly, looking around the room.

The red-eyed boy was grinning in open amusement, and the look that Pyro gave her was significantly less unfriendly than it had been before.  Mystique's face was composed, but she caught Rogue's eye and gave her a nearly imperceptible nod.  It had been the right thing to do.

"I think you made your point, cherie," the red-eyed mutant said easily, breaking the silence.  He stood up from the table and pulled out her chair for her to reseat herself and finish her dinner.  "I'd shake your hand, but Remy thinks that'd be a bad, bad idea.  But I'm pleased to make your acquaintance."  His voice was lovely and lilting, with an enchanting accent.

Rogue took his cue and reseated herself, strangely reassured by one final _click... clack_ from Pyro's lighter before he put it away with a final assessing glance at her.

 


	25. Chapter 25

Rogue was in the weaponry locker with Mystique, getting an introduction to the Brotherhood's arsenal, when Magneto found her.

She didn't really feel comfortable holding in her hands a device that had been constructed solely to harm and kill people, but then, her skin was just as deadly and had no safety catch and she'd spent years living with that, so she swallowed her chagrin and paid attention.

"When you store a weapon, _always_ store the ammo separately," Mystique was explaining pointedly.  "The only weapons that are stored loaded are our defensive weapons for the base, and you won't be using those for drills."

Rogue nodded, focused on the pistol in her hands so intently that she didn't notice for a few seconds that Mystique had broken off her instruction and turned her attention elsewhere.

"What about--" Rogue started to say, looking up and noticing Magneto standing in the doorway.

As usual, her heart leapt straight to her throat.  He wore a blue sweater that made his eyes look lighter than usual, but his expression was inscrutable as he watched them.  Mystique lifted the pistol out of Rogue's now-still hands and turned from them to stow it away properly.

"Thank you, Mystique," Magneto said politely.  "You and I will debrief later, before dinner.  Rogue, come with me."

"Yes, Sir," Rogue responded automatically, falling into step beside him.  She was acutely aware of him beside her as they walked through the halls at a clip... the height of him, the breadth of his shoulders, the warmth he generated, the strength that she knew he still possessed, both in his flesh and in his mind.  He could have reached out and taken her hand right then if he'd wanted to, without gloves, and she could have felt his fingers on hers without hurting him.  Not that he was the hand-holding type, of course, but it still made her feel almost giddy to contemplate the fact that he _could_ do that, if he wanted to.

It'd been three days since they had last spent time together that was at all normal, that morning in her studio at the university before their last fight.  It seemed like a lifetime, and Rogue's world had tilted on its axis more than once in that short seventy-two hours.  They were no longer the same people to each other.  They couldn't be, after what had happened.

He led her into his office.  He strode around the vast, nearly-bare expanse of metal desk and seated himself.  There was nowhere for Rogue to sit, so she did the only thing that seemed at all appropriate... stood awkwardly on the other side of the desk from him.

"I'm going to arrange for you to have rooms of your own," he told her evenly, folding his hands on the desk and sitting forward to look at her.  "You'll sleep with me most nights, but I think it's going to be important for you to have... a certain degree of privacy, as you adjust to your new life.  Also, I may not want you with me every night."

Rogue nodded slowly, trying not to be distracted by the graceful lines of his hands.  "Thank you, Sir," she responded in a reasonably even voice.

He paused, contemplating her.

"As you've probably already surmised, I expect you to learn to hold your own with the other members of the Brotherhood."  She nodded, and felt a ghost of a satisfied smile creep over her face.  She was surprised when he smirked in response.  "I have heard that you have already begun to do so," he said, with a note in his voice that might have been a trace of pride.

"Yes, Sir," she said again, wondering if this conversation would at any point involve her saying anything else.  Even if it did not, she found herself strangely content merely to be in his presence, knowing that this could now be a daily part of her life, and that whatever time she was allowed to spend with him would no longer be marred by her angst over this strange impulse to defer to him.

He nodded, firmly.  "I have no intentions at this time of involving you in any of the Brotherhood's missions," he told her, "though you are going to begin training and drilling with them.  At this point, you will only be expected to obey directives from Mystique and Pyro, unless another mutant is delivering orders to you on my behalf.  Everyone else you may deal with as you see fit, although you will learn to use your judgment in choosing actions of which you know that I would approve."

"Yes, Sir," she repeated for a third time.

"Once you have settled in, we will discuss the possibility of putting aside some space and ordering some supplies for you to have a studio."  Rogue felt a surge of excitement, both at the prospect of being able to continue working in the only field that had ever caught her interest for long, and over the fact that he had raised the idea himself.

"Really?" she almost squealed, then blushed at the girlishness of her tone and was relieved when he smiled a bit in response.  It seemed that he in some way cared for her peace of mind, for her happiness.

He studied her briefly then, as if searching for signs of rebellion.  Whatever it was that he saw seemed not to displease him.  He sat back in his chair, and another long moment passed.  She gazed at him, wetting her lips, finding herself relieved and content merely to be in his presence.  Of course she was longing for his touch, but it was good merely to be near him.

 _After..._ that _, good to be near him?  There's actually something wrong with you_ , an old, worn-out voice in her head told her.

Rogue felt no surge of anxiety.  *I don't care anymore,* she told it firmly and with satisfaction.

"I look forward to spending time with you without a power struggle, my dear," he told her suddenly, as if he could read her very thoughts on her face, and she noticed a faint softening around his eyes.  "This will be new territory for us."

At that, she felt a full smile break across her face.  As declarations of affection went, it was not very sentimental, but there was something about the way that he said the last word that made her feel, well...

... She was his, and that meant something.  Whether she was his toy or his lover, she was his.

"Report back to Mystique," he told her abruptly, and for a brief second she wondered if it was possible that he wasn't fully comfortable himself with a statement of affection even as oblique as the one he'd just provided.  "I will see you at dinner.  After dinner, we will retire together."

Rogue felt suddenly buoyant.  Tonight, they would be together.  And for the first time, she would know that she was truly in her place.

* * *

He ate in the dining hall with the troops.  She supposed that that was good for morale or something.  If he was warmer here, with his own men and women, then she had seen him be out among humans, it wasn't a dramatic change.  His wit was wry and sharp, but he did display a certain reserved paternal interest in the interactions among the Brotherhood.

When she entered, he glanced up, then returned to a conversation with the red-eyed mutant, Gambit.  He made no indication of where she should sit or how she should conduct herself with him present, so she seated herself on the other side of Mystique and continued the conversation about the Brotherhood's drilling habits that they had begun earlier in the day.  She noticed a few mutants glance between her and Magneto, looking for evidence of the dynamic they could expect between them, but she followed his cue and proceeded as if she did not expect any special treatment from him.

Before long Gambit left, having apparently been sent away on some kind of chore, and Magneto joined the conversation in progress between Mystique and Rogue.  So she wasn't going to have to expect to be ignored by him either, evidently.  As had happened many times in the past two days, Rogue was struck by the surrealism of her new life... for all the conversations that she'd now had with Magneto, it was another thing entirely to be sitting at a table with him and the rest of the Brotherhood, discussing the politics of mutant registration with him and his second-in-command.

When they were both done, he rose to leave.  Rogue readied to follow him, and was surprised when he stepped behind her and pulled out her chair for her, the complement of the gesture Remy had used to seat her in the aftermath of her conflict with the Blob the day before.

Trying not to blush, Rogue stood and followed him out of the room.  He was letting it be obvious that he was taking her with him.  More than one pair of eyes followed them.

They strode through the halls again much as they had earlier in the day, and Rogue was struck by how distant and unaccessible he was here among the Brotherhood, where he was a general and a strategist.  He'd certainly never been open or approachable in the city where'd they spent time together before, but it wasn't quite like this.

Rogue wondered if it was just habit.  She took a skipping step to fully catch up to him, and reached up and took his arm, sliding her hand into the crook of his elbow.

He paused briefly, looking down at her archly.  Rogue grinned up at him, and it was half-shy, half-impish.  A corner of his mouth actually quirked, and he laid his other hand over hers and let his pace slow just a bit from the efficient stride that seemed to be his custom here.

"I know it's going to be different here than it was in New York," she mused.  "There, we always had this, this separation from... well, everything else."

"Yes."  She had never once heard him say "yeah" or "sure" in the time she had known him.  Always 'yes.'  Fully enunciated.  "However, I do travel a great deal, and one advantage of having you here is that I'll be able to take you with me."

Travel!  She would get to go places with him.

*Even if you are just a toy, it's not so bad, is it, Rogue?*

"Like where?" she asked him eagerly, and he looked amused.

"Often to the continent.  Paris, Berlin, Venice.  Once in a while I need to go somewhere more exotic, Tokyo or Sydney.  I'll essentially be using you as a personal assistant, so you can be of some use to the Brotherhood even if I never decide that you're suited to participating in missions.  You'll be assisting Mystique with administration as well."

So she would be traveling, she would have duties that would allow her to spend time with him, and she could possibly even have her own studio here at Lanthanide Cove?  She never would have predicted that life with the Brotherhood would be so... well, it wasn't glamorous, exactly, was it?  But full.  Fuller, probably, than the little life that she had carved out for herself in New York had been.  She had given up worrying about whether she approved of Magneto's methods, and, well, maybe she was glad if her efforts would be directed toward the well-being of mutants, though she was relieved that he wasn't requiring her to participate in any missions.

Who knew?  She might like administration.

"Strip, Rogue."

Rogue froze and blinked up at him.  She'd been so caught up in her musing that she hadn't even noticed that he'd led her into his room and closed the door behind them.  Her familiar sense of inhibition stole back over her, and Rogue hesitated as she peered at him, already starting to worry at her bottom lip.  Then she saw his eyes harden, and she remembered... if she had accepted that she was his, then it was up to her now to make that a respectable thing to be.

Rogue stopped biting her lip, lifted her head minutely, and began to strip.

And felt warm and flushed as he gave her a look of approval.

He walked over to the dresser, where he emptied his pockets of his money clip and change, the familiar clink of metal against metal on the unpolished surface.  He pivoted then and leaned back against the dresser's edge, crossing his arms over his chest and propping one booted foot on top of the other.  It was a languid pose and she stared at him hungrily as she let the last item of her ensemble fall to the floor.  She could see his back reflected in the mirror behind him, the silver of his hair, the crisp line of his collar.

His eyes moved over her with a nearly palpable weight, and Rogue felt herself judged anew.  She held her breath, hoping to still be found worthy.  She straightened her back and let her arms fall at her side, leaving herself fully exposed to his scrutiny.

"You're a beautiful girl, Rogue," he drew out thoughtfully.

She exhaled.  "Thank you."  She braced herself to be bold and took a single step toward him.  "You're a handsome man.  Sir."

He tilted his head at her, a rueful twist to his mouth, and she realized that she had managed to surprise him a little.  She had always before been passive with him, responsive, certainly, but rarely expressive.  She wondered if he would approve of this change.

"Not exactly," he said cryptically, "but the effect is rather the same."  He looked amused.

"I find you handsome," she insisted.  The room was not as cool as much of the fortress, but she could feel her nipples tightening in response to her feelings of vulnerability and daring.  He was not going to let her forget who was in charge, and she was excited by the prospect of exploring the boundaries of how forward she could be.  "You're not all pretty in the way that guys my age are," she admitted, "but what you've got is... it's more... compelling, you know?  You... know what you're doing."  She bit her lip again, but this time it was not inspired by shyness.  "You know how to make me do what you want."  She heard her voice change as she said that.

"It's not difficult."  His tone was lower, huskier, also.  "Come here," he told her.

Rogue took a step forward, and he stopped her with a warning tut.  "Not like that, Rogue," he chided.

She froze, then dropped to her knees on the cool floor and crawled the rest of the way to him.  He smirked as she rose to her knees before him and grasped at the tightly-woven fabric of his pants, her face tilted up to his imploringly.

"Touch me, Sir," she begged. "Please.  I need it."

He didn't reach for her.  "Perhaps I do not wish to," he responded coolly.

Rogue gasped slightly, feeling almost as if she'd been slapped.  At the same time, she felt the quiver of response to his arrogance between her thighs.  Might he really be disinterested in her after bothering to bring her here to his room?  Maybe he was just encouraging her to plead more.

She parted her lips. "Oh god.   _Please_."  Her fingers scrabbled at his thighs, and he simply gazed down at her expectantly.  "Is there... is there something I can do?  To make you want me?"

He smiled dangerously.  "I suppose that you could try to entice me to touch you in a way that you know might hold some appeal for me," he suggested.

Rogue's brain churned on that desperately.  *A way that might hold some appeal for him?*  It clicked.

"Hurt me!" she gasped.  "Restrain me, hurt me, abuse me.  You like that!  I'll ask you for more; I'll thank you for it and mean it."

At that he actually chuckled.  "Ah.  So you have been paying some attention."

* * *

Rogue burrowed into warmth with a small whimper of satisfaction.  The arm that held her tightened briefly, possessively, and she suddenly jerked fully awake in alarm at her proximity to another body.

"Settle," she was told in a low, masculine voice, and she remembered that it was Magneto that she was pressed against and that he was safe from her.

Rogue relaxed again, her eyes now open, noting the faint, pre-morning suggestion of light outlining the geometry of the room.  She turned to look at the man whose bed she occupied.  His eyes were still closed, the lines of his face softened.  It was the first time she'd slept in his bed without the pretense that he was endangered by her mutation, and she'd never before woken up pressed against him like this.  She could feel his breath on the arm that lay across his bare chest.

"How come it doesn't hurt you?" she found herself asking, contemplating her forearm against him.

He turned his head slightly and answered without opening his eyes.  "You think of magnetokinesis as simply controlling metal, but it's not.  What I'm manipulating are the magnetic _fields_ , which has far broader applications than you realize."

Rogue thought about that.  "My mutation uses magnetic fields?"

He sighed softly.  "Rogue, your _body_ operates in many ways via magnetic fields.  Did Charles make you take _any_ science classes?"

Rogue squirmed against him again.  "Yes."  Her voice was sulky.

Long moments passed while Rogue watched the shadows on the wall define themselves ever more sharply.  Magneto was still, breathing evenly.

"You're still awake," Magneto observed.

Rogue traced her fingers across his chest thoughtfully.  If she listened hard enough, she thought that she could hear the ocean even from here.  She was starting to find the sound of it... comforting, somehow.  "We're very strange, aren't we?  I mean, I bet you never thought that we'd wind up like this."

"To be perfectly honest, my dear, I never thought about how we would 'wind up,' as you say," he responded wryly.  "I have neither planned nor intended anything when it came to you."

Rogue furrowed her brow.  "Really?"

His free hand came up to cover hers, stilling her restless motion.  "Really."

"Not even... the last bit?"  She wasn't sure how to refer to the fact that he had tortured her and quite possibly killed--well, she was perfectly aware of that last bit, but no good to come of thinking about it.  He had tortured her.

He opened one eye briefly and peered down at her, then closed it again.  "No, Rogue, not even the night that I punished you for running.  I did not know what the outcome would be."

"You would have killed me," she said, in a voice that sounded perhaps a little strained, but not accusatory, and he looked at her again, actually raising his head a bit this time to see her.  "Not because you were pissed off," she amended, before he could say anything, "because you told me you wouldn't do that.  You kidnapped me because you were pissed off, you... you punished me because you were pissed off, but you would have killed me just to be practical, if you didn't think that you could trust me to stay."

He lay his head back again and let his eyes drift closed.  "Possibly," was all he said.

"You would have," she insisted, and he sighed.

"Probably," he said.  "I don't know, and since it wasn't necessary, I really don't care."

Another silence unfolded, though this time she was aware that they were both wide awake.  Real dawn was breaking now, and she could see more of his face than its silhouette.

"Are you happy?" she asked suddenly.  "I mean, that it worked out this way.  That you forgave me, and let me stay, and now I'm really yours.  I mean, I finally admit it."

Magneto turned his face away from her then, turning her hand in his on top of his chest and running his fingers over her palm.  She could not see his expression as he hesitated.  Finally he said, "My life is complicated, Rogue, and happiness has never been much of a consideration for me.  But I... am pleased, Rogue.  I'm pleased to have you here.  With me."

Rogue felt something swell a little bit in her chest at his words, and she curled into him, loving the scent and texture of being pressed up against a man like this.  She smiled secretly and let her eyes drift closed, knowing that soon they would have to get up and begin the day.

She had almost begun to drift off again when she heard his voice, so low that she could barely make out his words.

"And you?"

Rogue blinked away his fuzziness.  He was asking...?  "Happy, you mean?"

"Yes," he said slowly, still not looking at her.  "Happy, that it worked out this way, that I forgave you and let you stay, and now you're mine and finally can admit it."

And though there had been a long silence between when she asked him and he answered that same question, Rogue did not need to think.  "Yes.  I'm happy it worked out this way."  She pressed her cheek against him.  "I'm still apprehensive about the rest of it, but I'm happy that it worked out this way."

He did turn back to her then and pressed a short kiss to her forehead before pushing himself to sit on the edge of the bed.

And she wondered if that had actually been a fleeting look of relief on his face.

 


	26. Epilogue

The air smelled fertile and rich, loamy.  Rogue had grown familiar with the salty smells of the ocean, had come to identify them with home, but couldn't deny a pang of nostalgia at the old scent of earth and bark and leaf.  For a fragment of a heartbeat, it stirred dormant senses, but Rogue ignored them.

"Move," Mystique told them sharply, and Rogue responded swiftly, following the metamorph in a low, ground-eating sprint along the treeline.  Pyro flanked Mystique's other side, and a fairly green recruit named Glyph trailed them all.  Rogue's adrenaline was pumping, but she was too focused to reflect on how fortunate it was that Mystique had spent hours drilling the rhythm of combat breathing into her until she was ready to scream in boredom... now, when she needed it, it mitigated the debilitating effects of her natural fight or flight response, allowing her to take advantage of its benefits.

They broke formation at a prearranged signal, Rogue and the new recruit continuing back toward the truck while Mystique and Pyro veered off to ensure some final distractions to cover their retreat.  Within moments, Rogue was clamoring into the vehicle, Glyph hot on her heels.

"How'd it go?" Rogue inquired immediately of Gambit, who was providing coordination for the mission.  He was hunched forward over the equipment, listening to an earpiece, but he flashed his cocky grin at Rogue and she felt a rush of relief.

Rogue turned to look Glyph over.  The waifish boy was panting hard, face covered in a sheen of sweat, eyes too bright.  One delicate hand clutched at his side, and she knew he was trying to hide a cramp from the sprint.  She shook her head ruefully.  The kid hadn't quite been ready, Mystique had been right.

Gambit lowered the earpiece.  "Everyone's clear.  Mystique and Pyro will be here in seconds.  The other team got out with seven of the mutants."

Seven.  There had been nine being held here.  Unfortunate, but acceptable.  Magneto would consider it a success.  Rogue nodded in satisfaction.

There was a new commotion as Mystique and Pyro leapt into the truck and it pulled clear of the copse of trees that they were using as a rendezvous point.  Pyro was flushed from using his power, his eyes glittering dangerously.  Mystique looked perfectly calm even before she'd fully come to a halt.

Gambit repeated his report for Mystique, who smiled grimly.  "Good.  Do you know which ones we lost?"

"The psychomorph and the little girl whose power we didn't know."  Gambit spoke off-handedly, but Rogue swore, earning a glance from Glyph.

"What?" Rogue said sharply to the recruit.  "Losses are acceptable, but that doesn't mean I have to like them.  It was one of the _kids_."

Glyph shot a look at Mystique.  "But we can't let our emotions interfere."  He was trying to ingratiate himself again after his failure.

Rogue rolled her eyes.  "I didn't let them interfere, Glyph.  That's the point.  But getting rid of them isn't the only way to master them."

Mystique rolled her yellow eyes over the exchange.  It was an argument that she and Rogue had had more than once.  Pyro and Gambit were engaged in a low conversation analyzing finer points of the attack, and a high-strung silence descended as the five-some bumped over the unpaved road.  Rogue wondered if their driver was aiming for the potholes.

Suddenly there was the loud crackle of static.  "Lanthanide to Mystique."  It was Magneto's distinctive baritone.

Mystique leaned over and hit the button to open the secure channel.  "Mystique," she answered shortly.

"How'd your team perform?"  Out of the corner of her eye, Rogue saw Gambit and Pyro sniggering and shooting her looks.  She felt herself blush slightly, but refused to look ashamed.  She knew as well as they did that Magneto would have gotten a status report from the main team, and could have waited until they were back at the cove for a detailed update from them.

Mystique was all brusque professionalism.  "I told you Glyph wasn't ready.  He froze at the third checkpoint.  I'm not taking him out again until he's up to snuff."

Glyph collapsed onto one of the benches with a low groan.  As Mystique had once told Rogue, there was little coddling among the Brotherhood.  It was no secret to his teammates that he'd let them down, and Rogue nodded once to herself at the open criticism from their leader, even as she felt a wave of sympathy for the kid.

"Noted," Magneto was responding.  "Everyone else?"

"He should just _ask_ ," Pyro said to Gambit, sotto voice, and Rogue squelched the urge to actually stick her tongue out at them.

Mystique kept her back to their antics.  "Everyone else did well, Erik.  Rogue has all the information we wanted.  Her control has come a long way."

Hearing her hard-won progress acknowledged aloud, Rogue had to look away from her teammates.  It was a bit emotional for her.  While she'd made no headway in stopping the absorption, she'd learned to control how many and which memories she drew from her targets, and she'd learned how to process what she absorbed efficiently enough to remain sharp on her feet in the aftermath.  She finally had something useful and unique to offer the Brotherhood and its leader.  Gambit was saying something teasing, but Mystique ignored him.

"Very well," Magneto said.  "We'll see you for debriefing at 0230."

"Mystique out," the metamorph closed, then went about her business.

And as her adrenaline finally started to ebb, Rogue sat down beside the despondent Glyph, suppressing a feeling of satisfaction.

* * *

"I don't _ever_ want to hear you contradict me in front of a contact again."

Magneto's voice was not raised, but Rogue knew every nuance of his tone, and knew that she was in for trouble.  She straightened her skirt discreetly; he never appreciated her fidgeting when he was angry at her.

"I'm sorry, sir, but if I hadn't she would have concluded from your misstatement that we could influence the Prime Minister, and it would have created more trouble for you than it was worth.  I thought it was better to correct you than to for you to have to deal with the misconception after it had gotten around."

Magneto turned slowly to regard her.  The car was sitting in traffic near the Rue de la Lune, and Rogue was going to be trapped in the back of this vehicle with an annoyed Magneto for at least forty-five minutes.  "Did I ask you for an explanation, or did I give you an order?"

She winced.  It was a bad habit that she still hadn't been able to shake.  "You gave me an order, sir."  Her voice was tight, and she could not meet his eyes.

Evidently she should have.  He reached out and took her chin and turned her face toward him.  She was tempted to keep her eyes averted anyway, but it wouldn't be a good idea to antagonize him further, so instead she looked at him.

*Breathe, Rogue, breathe,* she reminded herself, pinned in his clear blue gaze.

He released her chin, but held her with his eyes, trailing his fingers across her cheek and jaw.  That was all it took to quicken her pulse.  They hadn't found time for sex in several days, and he was in a mood, and now she had annoyed him.... twice.  He would make her suffer; she was adept at reading the signs by now.

His fingers trailed downward, but no longer in contact with her, and the blouse that she wore unbuttoned itself.  He liked to dress her in grey and red when she was accompanying him to meetings like this one, as a kind of unofficial uniform, an outward sign of her allegiance.  These garments in particular he always had custom-made, and while the metal buttons were visible, the small slivers that were sewn strategically inside of the seams were not.  It gave him great satisfaction to be able to undress her from across a room.

Rogue groaned and gave in to it.  Her blouse opened itself, her bra unclasped in front, and her skirt rucked itself up to the crease of her thighs.  Her eyes flew to the rearview mirror to see if Pyro was watching from the front seat, but his eyes remained diplomatically on the road.  Magneto did little to spare Rogue the humiliations of their sexual relationships in front of those few of her teammates that he trusted best, but Rogue herself had taught them over time not to assume that her submission to Magneto implied any liberties for those he allowed to witness it.

They were lucky that Rogue had made the point before it became necessary for Magneto to do so.

Magneto raised his hand again, levitating several gleaming orbs from their resting place in a compartment in the door.  Since his last imprisonment, he had always kept these near at hand when he was in public.  He mentally tossed them toward Rogue and she winced as they hit her on the breastbone, though there was little sensation of actual impact because each sphere flattened against her skin and began to slide over its surface like mercury.

The sensation was cool and strange and always made her skin crawl.  Her eyes were still on his, and she saw them alight with sadistic pleasure.  He knew how much she hated it when he hurt her without touching her... his touch, her hunger for it, made all of the pains that he inflicted on her so much more bearable, but when he just used his power, there was nothing of him that she could cling to to help her cope.

She firmed her jaw and raised it fractionally and he smiled.  The metal was sliding in slender, cool strands over her breasts, under her arms, over her shoulders, finding itself in the center of her upper back.  She dug her fingers into the upholstery of the seat beneath her as the metal harness around her breasts began to tighten.  The strands were wire-thin, and they began to bite into her flesh almost immediately.

"If it was an order I gave you, my dear, then why did I get an explanation of your behavior in response?"

Her eyes began to tear already.  She glanced up again, in time to see Pyro's eyes jerk away from the mirror.  Oh god.  She hated that other people saw her this way, but she knew that Magneto did it on purpose.  It's not like he didn't punish and correct the others in front of her, but his methods with them were... markedly different.

"Because I was foolish, sir," she told him breathily.

"Hmm," he murmured, his fingers flicking through the air.  Rogue gasped in a breath and lowered her head as the bite of the metal became harsher.  The wires were digging deep into her flesh, and her breasts were becoming pink and swollen.  Her pierced nipples protruded dramatically, and she closed her eyes in consternation when she realized how tight they were.

Magneto had clearly also noticed, as tendrils of metal slid across her areola and wrapped themselves around her nipples, behind the rings.  The improvised clamps began to squeeze, and her eyes flew open again as she felt sharp stinging.  Of course his ability to manipulate the molecules gave him a nearly unlimited amount of fine control, and the strands that consticted her nipples had fine teeth on them, digging in.  There were miniscule droplets of blood welling up from beneath the metal.

"Oh god," she moaned, "I'm so sorry sir, I swear I'm going to learn to stop doing that."

"Correcting me in front of others, or trying to justify your behavior afterwards?"

Her mouth worked for a moment.  "Both!  I'm going to stop doing both!"

His voice was amused.  "Yes.  You are."

In a few other places now, the wire was biting in her breasts so deeply that the top layer of skin was giving way, and rich red beads dotted her breasts like tiny pearls strung along the strands.  Nowhere had enough blood welled up to drip across her skin, but Rogue was gritting her teeth, then throwing her head back against the seat.  Of course the pain wasn't as bad as -- well, other things he'd done to her -- but it was so hard when he wasn't touching her, when it was so impersonal and he was so far away...

"Oh god please can I touch myself?" she begged.  It would be so much easier to take if he would at least let her rub her clit, even if he wouldn't touch her himself.  It would still hurt like hell, but the stimulation would help her process it.

"Of course not," he responded archly, and she looked back at him.  His pleasure in her predicament was clear to see, as well as the unusually pronounced bulge at his groin.  When he was in a mood like this, he seemed to find the combination of torturing her by withholding touch with the intoxication of using his power to hurt her instead to be somehow more satisfying even then fucking her.

Rogue's hands were almost fluttering in the air now, as if they were compelled to try to find something to do to relieve her suffering, but there was no clear course of action.  She grasped at his arm and he pushed her away.  Resolutely, she thrust her hands under her ass.  The combination of the burning bite with the crushing pressure on her breasts was almost nauseating.

"Please..." she begged again, though it wasn't clear what she was begging for this time.

"Please what?" he asked pleasantly, as if unsure if she wanted him to pass the sugar or the cream.

Rogue's eyes were full of desperation.  "Please _anything_."

Magneto's hands went to his waist, and she could have cried with relief when she saw him reach beneath the hem of his sweater in order to unbuckle his belt.  She scrambled forward, onto her knees on the floor, and crawled between his legs.

He smiled down at her condescendingly.  "You're such an eager little thing, aren't you?  Anything to feel skin on yours."

He was pulling his sex free of its confines, and she was leaning forward and taking him into her mouth even as he spoke.  It wasn't as good as his hands on her, but it was flesh, flesh she could touch, he was warm and soft and hard and silken and salty...

He leaned forward a bit over her and one hand slipped down between his thigh and her torso, grasping lightly at her swollen breast, and Rogue almost shrieked even with her mouth full of him.  What the hell had she been THINKING, that being touched would somehow make it easier?  She'd been thinking of his hand at the juncture of her thighs, of course, not of his hand wrapped around her bleeding breast and squeezing over top of the wire harness that was tormenting her.

"Have you handled everything with Mr. Zlutnick, Pyro?" Magneto asked their driver casually, even as his other hand wrapped itself in Rogue's hair and pushed her head down hard over the length of him.

"You bet, boss," Pyro responded fairly promptly, and Rogue just couldn't bear to think about whether his voice sounded just a little bit strangled.  "It's gonna take two months before the shipment is ready."

Magneto got a firm enough grip in her ample hair to force her head exactly where he wanted it, and he began to push her down so hard that he forced himself into the back of her throat, gagging her, as his fingers trailed across her throbbing breasts.  "And Mystique is prepared to coordinate the interception?"

"Yeah, though she's bitching about how disorganized they are.  Evidently their team is nowhere near up to her standards."

"Unsurprising."  Rogue hated, _hated_ him for how calm he sounded.  She was trying so hard not to splutter and gag audibly, but it was impossible, and the counterpoint of her wet, gasping struggles against their nonchalant conversation was mortifying.  "I have no doubt that they'll be the better off for it once she's done with them."

Pyro snorted.  "Well, they'll be better off if she doesn't kill them, I guess.  You know how she is."

Magneto's fingers had found her nipple and tugged lightly, and Rogue could not constrain her muffled cries.  She was almost ready to start praying for relief when she felt his hips shift slightly upward, tightening, and she sobbed with gratitude at the sign.

"You may touch yourself now, Rogue," Magneto said softly, though probably not too softly for Pyro to hear, but she couldn't have cared less as she plunged her fingers between her thighs and began to rub at herself fiercely.  In a way it heightened the other sensations, but it didn't matter as a fresh surge of arousal immediately swept through her body and consumed her consciousness.

He came first, but then, he never much cared about waiting for her.  He shoved her off of him and she fell back on the floor, sobbing quietly and trying to push herself over the brink.  He rested one booted foot on her thigh as he reassembled himself, straightening his sweater and continuing the conversation with Pyro, though she was no longer coherent enough to follow its content.

The rest of the ride passed swiftly.  Mystique was waiting for them at the hotel, pacing irritably, her appearance that of an aging Asian businessman.  Rogue had managed to scrape herself off the floor and put herself back together fairly promptly -- it was a skill one learned when one belonged to a lunatic like Magneto.  Rogue and Magneto both looked fairly composed as they stepped out of the car, though Pyro seemed slightly flustered.

"Finally," Mystique snapped at them, her eyes scanning them all with her characteristically swift assessment.   "We need to be at Notre Dame within an hour."

"We'll be there," Magneto responded smoothly, unconcerned.  Rogue retrieved his suitcase from the back seat and stood silently at his side.

Mystique grabbed the suitcase from Rogue and turned to stride inside.  "Yes, well, Rogue better change her clothes quickly.  You've gotten blood on her shirt again."

* * *

As Magneto stepped down from the dais in the front of the room, Rogue reflected again that he truly was a gifted orator.  The mutants in the room were restless, dissatisfied, angry.  Many of them would be approaching the Brotherhood tonight.  Within days, their ranks would swell even further.

She stood on the edge of the crowd, filled with restlessness herself.  Magneto barely even glanced at her as he began to speak to the mutants that he had profiled for recruitment beforehand.  It seemed frequent lately that he barely glanced at her.  She knew that he was preoccupied with the war, but it still stung.

She turned to step outside.  The old warehouse was musty, unclean.  She wanted fresh air.

Magneto wasn't the only one preoccupied.  She should have known that she was being stalked.

She was gloved tonight, well-covered.  It wasn't her habit anymore, but it was cold here.   But it allowed him to be cavalier as he grabbed her by the upper arm and dragged her unceremoniously around the corner, slamming her up against the rough brick hard enough that she cracked her head and her vision went blurry for a moment.

"Wolverine," she breathed, raising a hand to her hand to steady it.  His face was snarling, his eyes dilated and feral.

"Marie," he hissed, breath hot on her face.  She widened her stance automatically, forced herself to focus.  She was in danger.

Her only uncovered skin was her face, but he was so close to her that that might work.  "It's Rogue," she corrected him.

"Ain't a kid anymore, are ya?" he growled.  "Not even I can pretend that, not after what ya did."

"No reason to pretend, sugar," she said simply.  "Though I'm not sorry to see that you survived it."

His nostrils flared, and Rogue was listening closely to the voices of the mutants around the corner on the steps, hoping to hear Magneto or Pyro or Mystique, even Gambit.  Even with her control as good as it was now, she would rather avoid absorbing Wolverine again.  He'd been in her head before she knew how to control the voices, and she was worried that a fresh dose might wake up that part that was already in there.

"'Not sorry'?" he mocked.  "But you ain't glad either, are you?"

She tested his grip a bit, but his hold was tight.  She would have bruises on her arms, and that would anger Magneto.  "What's it matter, Wolverine?  Fight me or let me go.  We got nothing to chat about."

"Fight you?  Are you kidding?"

Damn it.  This was stupid.  Rogue lurched forward suddenly and slammed her mouth into his.

It startled him, the violence of it catching him off guard, and he let go of her.  She heard the impact of his adamantium fist against the brick, the *snikt* right by her ear, and she tasted copper as their teeth raked across one another's lips.  Her heart was hammering, and like so long ago, the one other time that they'd kissed, he didn't break away when she began to pull at him.

She buried her hands in his wild hair and pressed deeper into his hot mouth and felt him being sucked into her.  It took only a second before he collapsed downward, falling onto one knee before her, back of his hand pressed hard against his mouth.

She made sure her voice was even as she looked down at him.  "Leave me alone, Wolverine.  I have no desire to hurt you."

His voice was torn and raw, and he tried to stagger back to his feet but could not.  "I'm going to kill him someday, for what he did to you."

Rogue paused just a moment, her back already to him.  "You'll have to go through me to do it."

* * *

Rogue let the door slam behind her.  She was drenched in sweat, a damp towel in her hand.  She hated having to drill covered up, but it was safest when she was sparring with the others for her hands to be the only conduit for her power.

"How did it go?"  She started at Magneto's voice.  He was sitting in the chair by the window, reading in the dazzling mid-afternoon light.  Not a typical place to find him on a weekday afternoon.

She tossed her dirty towel on the bed, causing him to frown, and began to strip down for her shower.  "Fine," she said shortly.  "I mean, it sucked.  John almost singed my hair off."

Magneto cocked an eyebrow at her strangely, and Rogue wondered why.  Oh, right.  She'd just called Pyro John.  It wasn't a mistake that she'd made in a long time.  He didn't like too many reminders of her former life.

"I meant Pyro," she muttered, dropping her filthy bra and leggings on the floor.

The water was running, Rogue standing nude at the edge of the tub, waiting for it to hit a temperature that suited her, when she felt a hand on her back.  She tensed, then sighed.

"Tell me," he said.

"I'm just cranky.  Please, would you leave it alone, just for today?"  She was careful -- she had learned the hard way -- always to phrase what she wanted of him as a question.  He took poorly to commands, no matter how off-handed the phrasing.

His hand smoothed upward over her back, and she shuddered.  Sometimes she thought that his ability to control her through touch hurt more than his willingness to control her through pain.  His were the only hands she'd ever felt on her.  The only ones she ever would feel.  She loved him, obviously, but it still wasn't fair.

"Tell me," he repeated, his voice coaxing.  His hands slid over her ribs, her breasts, her stomach, as he pulled her back against his lean, clothed form, almost molding her to him.

"There's nothing to tell," she said petulantly, even as she pressed back against him, closing her eyes.  The water was still running, but who cared.

His mouth, then, on her ear, on the side of her throat.  She tipped her head to the side, giving him access.  "There's something," he murmured in a low voice.  It was rare that he was this seductive with her, and Rogue felt a little spark of the old resentment over her immediate desire to let herself melt into him.

She knew she had to answer, but she didn't know what to say.  She didn't know *what* had been bothering her.

"I don't know," she said, then winced in readiness for the reprimand, but it didn't come.  "I just... something doesn't feel right.  With you.  Lately."

His hands, on her breasts again, teasing them to tautness.  "This feels right," he told her.  She pressed back again, her body increasingly warm and thrumming.  She wiggled her bottom, looking for evidence of her arousal... and then slowly realized that he wasn't particularly hard.

He was playing with her.  Some traitorous part of her found even that hot.  Rogue sighed deeply, then chuckled, knowing that she could not fight this if he wanted to do it.  She was no less aroused for knowing that he was manipulating her.

"You take me for granted," she said suddenly, since that was what had been bothering her, though she didn't pull away as she said it.

One of his hands slid downward, between her legs, his fingers finding their way into her easily.  "Of course I do," he agreed, nuzzling in her hair.  "That's one of the advantages to having a submissive lover."

Rogue opened her eyes, moved her hands back behind her to his hips.  She was still moving beneath his hands, but her head was a little less fuzzy now that she'd said it.  "Well, sir... maybe you take me a little too much for granted."  She arched deliciously against him, thinking of an idea that had been occurring to her recently, remembering that submission did not have to mean passivity.

She could almost feel him smile against her hair at her tone.  "And whatever makes you think that, my dear?" he said wryly.

She slid her hands over top of his then, rocking her mons against his palm.  She probed outward like she did when she was preparing to use her power on a mission, to control the flow even if she couldn't turn it off, and found the blankness that was whatever he did to protect himself from her.  She pushed on the void, and heard him murmur her name, when suddenly she narrowed her focus to one little spot, gathered all of the sucking energy of her power into one hard knot, and shoved as sharply as she could against the void in one place.

And was rewarded by the pull of her mutation against Magneto's hand, his power flowing into her via that one narrow pathway.

He gasped and she felt him waver on his feet for a split-second, and she used the trickle of his power to push herself away from him, from the metal he was wearing.  She was careful not to push him backward -- still mindful after all this time of his admonition that she never use his power *against* him -- but instead pushed against him to move herself forward a bit, out of his reach.

She turned, a wide grin on her face, in time to see him wipe an expression of actual surprise off of his.  "I think that you might be taking me for granted, sir, because you're forgotten that just because I'm yours, doesn't mean I'm harmless."

He stared at her for a long moment, but Rogue refused to let her spirits flag.  That had been fun, dammit.  He deserved to be reminded that she could still surprise him.  She continue to grin in the face of his impassivity.

And after a moment, he smirked.

And after another moment, he threw back his head and laughed.

Rogue stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck, laying her head against his chest, which vibrated with his amusement.  She was giggling as his arms came around her.

"Enjoy your little moment, you wench," he told her in an entertained voice.  "I will quickly figure out a way to prevent you from doing that again."

Her fingers twined in the hair at the base of his skull.  "Figures.  You do love to ruin my fun."

He lifted her off her feet then, and dumped her beneath the spray of the shower.  He got thoroughly splashed in the process, but didn't seem to mind.  Rogue tried to pull him fully-clothed in with her, but he swatted her ass and pulled away with a smile.

"I never thought that you were harmless, my dear.  But at least you used to be stupid."

Ignoring her sound of outrage, he turned and walked away.


End file.
